Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Assyrians In California To Pray For Those Kidnapped, Threatened By I

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Assyrians In California To Pray For Those Kidnapped, Threatened By I

    ASSYRIANS IN CALIFORNIA TO PRAY FOR THOSE KIDNAPPED, THREATENED BY ISIS

    The Pasadena Star-News, CA
    Feb 27 2015

    By Susan Abram, Los Angeles Daily News

    The woman who entered St. Mary's Assyrian Church of the East on
    Thursday morning kissed the foot of a cross, then cried out a
    tearful plea.

    "Please, God, please help the innocent," she said in an ancient
    language inside the San Fernando Valley church. "Please save them."

    Her prayers reflect an ache that has settled into the hearts and minds
    of Assyrians far and wide since Monday, when the Islamic State, also
    known as ISIS, pillaged three dozen Assyrian Christian villages along
    the Khabur River in northeastern Syria. They burned down homes and
    churches, kidnapped more than 200 people, mostly women and children,
    and threatened to execute them if the Kurdish militias in the region
    do not release several ISIS militant prisoners.

    It's the latest Middle East crisis for Assyrians, who were among the
    first Christians in the world, said Cor-Bishop Father George Bet Rasho,
    who heads St. Mary's Parish in Tarzana.

    Bet Rasho said the kidnappings and the displacement of 3,000 people
    have prompted a worldwide call for Assyrian churches in California
    and across the nation to hold a special prayer vigil Friday night. His
    hope is that people of all faiths in the community will join them at
    7:30 p.m. at St. Mary's at 5955 Lindley Ave. in Tarzana to pray for
    the helpless.

    "We're praying that ISIS will not parade these women and children in
    cages and burn them," he said, referring to the Jordanian pilot who was
    burned alive by ISIS earlier this month. "We're hoping for a miracle."

    To say the Assyrians' plight is dire is an understatement, Bet Rasho
    and others said. Assyrians are the indigenous people of Mesopotamia,
    presently Iraq, where the last and largest concentration of
    Aramaic-speaking people in the world have lived for thousands of years.

    But after the start of the second Gulf War in 2003, an estimated
    half-million Assyrians fled to Syria because of a surge of Islamic
    extremist attacks against them and other Christian minorities. Then
    the Syrian civil war began, and the ranks of ISIS swelled.

    Since the takeover in June of Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city,
    ISIS has targeted the Christian population, whose faith has been
    present for almost 2,000 years. Assyrians were forced to flee again.

    The U.S. State Department this week released a statement condemning
    the militants' actions "in the strongest possible terms."

    U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, of Burbank, is the top Democrat of the House
    Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. He introduced a bill
    recently for use of military force against ISIS that would prohibit
    the use of American ground forces in a combat mission. Schiff said the
    White House is trying to determine how many people have been kidnapped,
    where they have been taken and ways to liberate them. There also are
    ongoing efforts to support the Christian and non-Christian groups
    fighting to protect the villages, Schiff said.

    "People are not only being kidnapped, but women are being forced
    into slavery, men are murdered and churches are burned in an effort
    to eradicate their history," he said Thursday.

    "Every effort has to be made to protect these communities, to seek
    the safe return of those kidnapped, and to stop this evil that goes
    by the name of Islamic State," Schiff said.

    Schiff, who has sought U.S. recognition for the Armenian Genocide,
    said he can understand why Christians in the Middle East have drawn
    parallels to that event that began exactly a century ago this year. An
    estimated 1.5 million Armenians from the Ottoman Empire died from
    1915-23 in what was called the first genocide of the 20th century.

    Though the Turkish government still denies it, Armenians say the
    killings involved the systematic cleansing of Christians, which
    included Assyrians and Pontic Greeks.

    "It does harken back for both Armenians and Assyrians to terrible
    chapters in the past in efforts to exterminate them," Schiff said.

    "I've been concerned about these communities ever since civil war
    began in Syria. We're only seeing that trend continue and accelerate
    with the execution of the Coptic Christians, with the kidnapping of
    Assyrians, and the displacement of Armenians in Kessab."

    Members of A Demand for Action, a group founded last year to raise
    awareness and create a safe haven in Iraq for indigenous people and
    minorities, said they will continue to press legislators to make sure
    some action is taken to avoid the deaths of those kidnapped.

    "We are devastated, frightened and horrified," said Nuri Kino, founder
    of the group. Kino said families of the abducted who call relatives'
    cellphones in Syria hear the phrase "Allahu akbar," or "God is Great.

    This is the Islamic State."

    "We will not rest before we have the help of the world leaders," Kino
    said. "If ISIS increases its power it, will be the worst threat to
    the world since the Nazis. The president of the United States needs
    to speak out and save our victims. Our militias need more support. We
    and the Kurds together are the only ones who can save those areas. U.S.

    has to send airstrikes to give us assistance and boots on the ground."

    Meanwhile religious leaders such as Bet Rasho say they are often
    confronted by questions of faith, and by those who express anger and
    frustration in a world that seems to have forgotten them.

    "Sometimes we don't know the reasons for things," Bet Rasho said. "But
    we do know there is a God who provides us with the air we breathe,
    that there is more good in the world than evil and that we can't give
    up. When we give up hope, that is when we lose."

    http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/social-affairs/20150227/assyrians-in-california-to-pray-for-those-kidnapped-threatened-by-isis

Working...
X