Islamic State practices non-modern slavery

While Vatican is hosting conferences on modern day slavery, Islamic State is practicing non-modern slavery.

A pamphlet published by Islamic State providing guidelines for treating woman slaves.


Amnesty International published a report titled "Escape From Hell" detailing torture and sexual slavery in Islamic State captivity in Iraq

Enthusiastic missionaries and hesitating military surveil Iraq

Christian ministries in Iraq are working day and night among the displaced Kurdish people of Iraq with an aid mission.  The aid mission is providing necessities of displaced people and is attempting to convert them to Christianity.  This information is provided by the Christian Aid Mission and is published by Mission Network News of USA. (by Ruth Kramer, on 13th October 2014, https://www.mnnonline.org)

A colonel, serving as a division commander of the Peshmerga and fighting ISIS, is converted to Christianity, according to this report.  The Kurdistan Regional Government's armed forces to which the colonel belongs, have helped to slow the incursion of ISIS in its brutal push to establish a caliphate imposing a strict version of Sunni Islam.  With the aid of U.S. air strikes, the Peshmerga have also slowly retaken some territory. They are helping to secure the Kurdish capital of Erbil, where a ministry team assisted by Christian Aid Mission is supplying displaced people with food, clothing, beds, and medicine. The colonel met the ministry team members and interacted with them. The colonel was impressed by the help that is being offered. The Peshmerga colonel, whose name is withheld for security reasons, was quick to respond.

"You see the Arabs around you in the Gulf states, which claim to be religious Muslims, have not sent us anything but terrorists," he told the ministry team members. "But you who follow Christ send love and peace and goodness to people every day. Today I am the happiest person! I've had the privilege of making this decision,' and he received a copy of the Bible."

According to the report, the colonel's experience was just one of many taking place in Iraq. In cities of refuge like Erbil for people displaced from their homes in other parts of Iraq, people are turning to Christ at a stunning pace. Tent churches are springing up in the makeshift camps. Under normal circumstances, mission strategies focus on how to proclaim Christ effectively, but the challenge now is keeping pace with the number who would receive Him, the director said.  The fervor of missionaries is such that some church leaders and workers for ministry organizations are remaining in Iraq even as the cruel practices of ISIS–beheading Iraqi children who refuse to deny Christ in Qaroqosh and Western journalists elsewhere–gain greater notoriety.

The news also includes a message and a request to more funds for food, water, medicine, and other supplies and promises to utilize the opportunity to demonstrate Christ's love in a tangible way.  While the UN and its powerful members are approaching the problem of ISIS in a hesitant and calibrated manner, missionaries are busy in poaching the helpless Islamic denominations by providing them with New Testaments and audio Bibles.

Saharanpur riot images

Communal riots between Muslims and Hindus has erupted in Saharanpur in western Uttar Pradesh over a land dispute.  Sikhs have a Gurudwara and they have purchased an adjacent land 15 years back. According to Muslims, the same land belongs to Waqf board.  Construction activity on the site has resulted in a clash between two communities in July last week.

The image published through media channels show rioting Muslims.

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The questions now are

1. Is it so difficult to identify the owner of a piece of land without any ambiguity?
2. Is it so difficult to give the land to their rightful owners?
3. Why the administration in every city is playing hide and seek when it comes to allotment of lands to temples and mosques?
4. Why a mosque is illegally built  in many situations? Why such illegal mosques are legalized?
5. Why should not rioting groups be separated in different localities?

Pope Francis promotes Internet for conversions

Pope Francis has praised the Internet as a "gift from God" that facilitates communication. Communication is a crucial element to reach out to non-Christians to bring them to the Christianity - euphemism for religious conversions.  Francis made the observations in a message about Catholic Church communications, titled "meditating on the marvels and perils of the digital era" and what that means for the faithful going out into the world and interacting with people of different faiths and backgrounds. 

Soft spoken Pope Francis is feared by non-Christians, especially Hindus, for his belligerent enthusiasm to infuse fresh energy in Christian engagement with the rest of the world.  The ability of Pope Francis to take riskier positions while delivering the commitment of the Church to proselytize non-Christians is evident when he said "To (have a) dialogue means to believe that the 'other' has something worthwhile to say, and to entertain his or her point of view and perspective," The New Pope is saying that in engaging in that dialogue, Catholics shouldn't be arrogant in insisting that they alone possess the truth.   For Pope Francis, this is not an intellectual commitment for an unconditional dialogue seeking the truth. To clarify Francis wrote. "Engaging in dialogue does not mean renouncing our own ideas and traditions, but the pretense that they alone are valid and absolute." 

Internet is invading all spheres of lives of people, especially newer generations and transforming the way people communicate. Setting an agenda for the Church to exploit this  phenomenon to spread Christianity, Pope Francis noted in his message on Thursday 23rd January 2014, that Internet offers "immense possibilities" to encounter people from different cultural and traditional backgrounds and show solidarity with them.  The Pope is confident of using the Internet efficiently and so said "This is something truly good, a gift from God". Continuing he also called for communications in the digital era to be like "a balm which relieves pain and a fine wine which gladdens hearts".  Specifically, he wants the church's message not to be one of bombarding non-Chrsians with Christian dogma in an ineffective way.  Pope Francis said "May the light we bring to others not be the result of cosmetics or special effects".   He reiterated to focus on the vulnerable and the poor to receive the effective communication to be read by the Internet.  "The light we bring to others be of our being loving and merciful neighbors to those wounded and left on the side of the road," he said.

Although the media is predicting that the comments would likely to rile the more conservative wing of the church, in reality, Pope Francis has offered the softer approach in sermons and gestures, not deviating from the rigid Church teachings. 

According to church teaching distilled by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Catholic Church holds the "fullness of the means of salvation" — a message that has long been taken to mean that only Catholics can find salvation. Church teaching also holds that those who don't know about Jesus but seek him can also attain eternal salvation. Pope Francis is also just following the path of his previous head - Pope Benedict XVI who was a strong proponent of engaging in inter religious dialogue.

Archbishop Claudio Mario Celli, the head of the Vatican's social communications office, said he didn't think Francis was making an official policy statement on inter religious dialogue, noting that the message was merely a reflection, "not a conciliar or dogmatic text."

But he acknowledged that Francis is shaking things up in much the same "providential" way Pope John XXIII shook up the church in launching the Second Vatican Council. "We are realizing that there are sensations of, I wouldn't say difficulty, but of discomfort sometimes in certain circles," he said. "I think step by step we must rediscover a sense of the path, of what the pope wants to tell us." Pope Francis is cleverly positioning the Church to hasten the proselytizing pace and his followers take some time to understand and adopt his style of thinking.