Louis Raphael Sako, the Catholic Patriarch and head of Iraq’s largest church, has condemned the actions of ISIS militants as “heinous.” The insurgent group recently drove the last Christian out of Mosul and have enforced a “convert or die” mandate upon much of Iraq and Syria.
“The heinous crime of the Islamic State was carried out not just against Christians, but against humanity,” Sako said in a special church service held in Baghdad Sunday.
"How in the 21st century could people be forced from their houses just because they are Christian, or Shi'ite or Sunni or Yazidi? Christian families have been expelled from their houses and their valuables were stolen and ...their houses and property expropriated in the name of the Islamic State.
"This has never happened in Christian or Islamic history. Even Genghis Khan or Hulagu didn't do this.”
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has also condemned the militants for their cruel methods. The group’s “aggression against the churches and the houses of worship in the area under their control reveals beyond any doubt the extremist criminal and terrorist nature of the group,” he said.
Publication date: July 22, 2014