60 Minutes Covers ISIS Persecution of Christians

Carrie Dedrick | Updated: Mar 23, 2015

60 Minutes Covers ISIS Persecution of Christians

The plight of Iraqi and Syrian Christians is gaining widespread attention after ISIS persecution was addressed on the news TV show “60 Minutes.” 

ISIS has actively pursued power in Iraq’s Nineveh Plains since last summer. 60 Minutes reports over 125,000 Christians have been forced out of their homes as the terrorist organization sought to establish an Islamic caliphate. 

60 Minutes correspondent Lara Logan spoke to an Iraqi monk about the horrors that Christians face in a region that has practiced the faith for 2,000 years. 

Logan asked Father Joseph Ibrahim what he was most afraid of. He answered, “the future.” 

“What do you think is going to happen?” Logan asked. 

Ibrahim said, “We don't know exactly but we are expecting the worse.” 

One Iraqi Christian man described his experience escaping ISIS captivity with his family. Issah Al Qurain was pursued by militants in his home who ordered him to convert or be killed. At first he refused, but then agreed to convert to save his family. Still, his family remained in danger. 

“They said to me that in Islam, the Sharia says, girls that are 10 years old should get married. As soon as they left, my wife and I shut the door. We looked at each other and she started to cry and pray. We were so scared they were going to take our daughter from us.”

Al Qurain’s family managed to escape by traveling in the back of a taxi for four hours on back roads. They now are refugees, along with hundreds of thousands of others. 

Publication date: March 23, 2015



60 Minutes Covers ISIS Persecution of Christians