The Iraqi Christian who told ISIS: ‘If you want to kill me for my faith I am prepared to die here now’

When Christian villagers from the Iraqi town of Caramles fled advancing IS forces, 80-year-old Victoria was among a dozen or so unable to leave. The widow, a Chaldean Catholic, knew nothing about the sudden evacuation that had suddenly emptied this ancient village she had known for so long. Next morning she went to church – St Addai’s – as she did every day. She found the place locked; the streets deserted. She knew IS had come.

We met Victoria on our first evening in Erbil at the start of a fact-finding and project assessment trip for Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need. She wanted to tell us the story of how she and her friend and neighbour Gazella survived.

For four days, they locked themselves in their home, not daring to venture out. “Prayer sustained us,” said Victoria. But they needed food for the body as well as food for the soul and when supplies ran dangerously low they went in search of water and other basics.

Inevitably they ran into IS forces. Explaining their situation, they asked for help and to their surprise IS gave them water even after they refused a request to abandon their faith.

A few days later, IS found them in their homes and rounded them up at St Barbara’s shrine just on the edge of Caramles. There were about a dozen of them there, the last remaining Christian inhabitants of the village.

“You must convert,” IS forces told them. “Our faith can promise you paradise,” they added.

Victoria and Gazella responded: “We believe that if we show love and kindness, forgiveness and mercy we can bring about the kingdom of God on earth as well as in heaven. Paradise is about love. If you want to kill us for our faith then we are prepared to die here and now.”

IS forces had no answer. The dozen Christians, who included many elderly and infirm, were let go. One of them had a battered car. Other transport was also arranged and they made it to safety.

Victoria and Gazelle are still neighbours. But they no longer live in two homes side by side but two mattresses in a room they rent courtesy of the Church in Ainkawa, near Erbil, the capital of Kurdish northern Iraq.

There on the mattresses they told their story. Completing it, Victoria had tears in her eyes. “Ebony”, she said, reaching out her arms to me.

After we embraced, her bishop, Amel Nona of Mosul, himself a refugee too, told me that “Ebony” is Arabic for “my child”. I went away thinking that I was indeed a child sitting at the feet of women of great fortitude, faith and friendship.

Source: Catholic Herald

Iraqi Christian: ‘ISIS terrorist held a sword to my throat but I refused to convert’

Iraqi refugee Khiria Al-Kas Isaac (Pic by Sahar Mansour in Ankawa, Iraq)

An Iraqi Christian woman described this week how she defied ISIS terrorists who put a sword to her throat and told her to either convert to Islam or lose her head.

With the blade at her neck, she replied that she would rather die than give up her Christian faith. But instead of decapitating her, the Islamists – many of whom she described as foreigners with long beards – robbed her of all her possessions before eventually driving her from Qaraqosh.

The woman, Khiria Al-Kas Isaac, 54, is one of a rising number of Christian refugees to escape over the border to Kurdish-controlled territory with tales of how they narrowly escaped with their lives after they refused to convert to Islam.

Weeping as she recounted her ordeal, Khiria said she and husband, Mufeed Wadee’ Tobiya, awoke on the morning of August 7 to find that Qaraqosh had been over-run by ISIS fighters.

She was told repeatedly by the militants, “who spoke different languages”, from the first day that if she did not convert to Islam she would be decapitated. When she ref- used, she and 46 women, who had also rejected such demands, were separated from their families and whipped and beaten over a 10-day period in an attempt to make them abandon their Christian faith.

Khiria said: “I answered [the terrorists] immediately, I was born Christian and if that leads me to death, I prefer to die a Christian.”

Quoting from the Gospel of St Matthew (10:33), she said: “Jesus said: ‘Whoever denies me before men, I will also deny him before my Father who is in heaven’.”

Khiria said that the women were often assembled as a group to be whipped so that they could witness how the others were suffering grievously.

She said that none of the women capitulated under the scourging and other cruelties inflicted upon them. “All of us were crying but refused to convert,” Khiria said.

She added that when an ISIS terrorist who was flogging her across her back told her he would “hurt you more” unless she became a Muslim, she answered him:

“I am an old lady [and] sick. I have not got any daughter or son that may increase the number of Muslims or follow you, what is the benefit if I will convert?”

On the 10th day all of the women were assembled together again and a terrorist “put the sword on my neck in front of all the ladies and said to me: ‘Convert or you will be killed.’”

Khiria answered: “I am happy to be a martyr.”

At that point the terrorists relented, and robbed her of all possessions, including money she had saved for a kidney operation, and drove close to Kurdish territory where she was released on September 4 along with her husband and two other women.

The following day 14 men and women were also expelled from Qaraqosh. It is not known what has happened to the remaining Christians.

Sahar Mansour, a refugee from Mosul who interviewed Khiria in Ankawa refugee camp near Irbil, said the woman was now unable to sleep because of nightmares about her experiences.

Source: Catholic Herald