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Thursday, August 14, 2014

Just be glad you don't have to be this committed to your faith





Apparently the radical Islamists in ISIS are trying to avoid committing crimes against humanity by only killing certain portions of humanity. They are marking Christian homes in the territories they invade with the Arabic letter "N,", which stands for "Nazarene" in this case and marks a home for special treatment:


Sounds great to me:
Apparently ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham) have been painting it on the houses of Christians in the city of Mosul in Iraq. Basically these Christians are being asked to either a) convert to Islam, b) pay a ridiculously high tax or c) be killed. Pretty crazy stuff. Thankfully many Christians have come up with a fourth option and d) fled.
I have heard at least three versions of the translation of ISIS. There is the above, which is new to me, the "Islamic State in Iraq and Syria," which appears to be the government-favored version, and, of course, ISIL, which stands for "Islamic State in Iraq and Levant." This strikes me as most accurate. The Levant is not just Syria, but includes part of Turkey, pretty much all of Syria, part of Iraq, most of Israel and Lebanon, part of Jordan and part of Egypt. It clearly is more than just "Iraq and Syria:"
The Levant (/ləˈvænt/), also known as the Eastern Mediterranean, is a geographic and cultural region consisting of the "eastern Mediterranean littoral between Anatoliaand Egypt".[2] The Levant today consists of the island of Cyprus, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, and part of southern Turkey (the former Aleppo Vilayet).
Precise definitions have varied over time, and the term originally had a broader and less well-defined usage.[3] The Levant has been described as the "crossroads ofwestern Asia, the eastern Mediterranean and northeast Africa",[4] and the "northwest of the Arabian plate".
So, these guys are claiming pretty much all of what we know as the Middle East. What could go wrong?

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