Fr. Benedict Kiely
Less than a year ago I stood in the ruined Old City of Mosul, standing next to the mosque where the Caliphate had been proclaimed by ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. There was a large hole in the roof, and the whole area around it had been bombed to rubble. Apart from the corpses of ISIS fighters which were still being removed from the area, the only other physical sign of their recent presence, apart from their graffiti on buildings, were piles of facial hair on the floor of many of the buildings; they had shaved off their beards in a vain attempt to avoid being identified.
The Caliphate – the “Islamic state” which at one point controlled
large amounts of territory in Iraq and Syria – is almost defeated.
However, while losing the battle for land, the extremist ideology and
the thousands of men and women who swore allegiance to the Caliph are
far from vanquished. Groups pledging allegiance to the ISIS cause are
growing – notably in Africa and the Philippines – and videos of “ISIS
brides” captured in Syria in recent weeks show how fanatically committed
they are to the cause. Notably it is the women who are most vocal in
their continued dedication to ISIS; the men absurdly claim to have been
only cooks and domestic workers.
ISIS brides were not – contrary to the narrative widely reported in
the Western press – the passive, controlled and brainwashed victims of
their husbands. In fact, they have shown themselves to be just as
devoted, and just as cruel, as their fighting husbands. Critically, this
is the experience reported by their victims, who seem to have been
largely forgotten in the emotional outrage over ISIS babies, stirred up
by press and politicians.
Thousands of Yazidi women and children were captured by ISIS more
than four years ago. They were used as sex slaves and some children were
even advertised for sale in ISIS literature. Christian women were also
held captive and treated the same way.
Western media and politicians congratulated themselves as Nadia
Murad, the Yazidi former ISIS captive was rightfully awarded the Nobel
Peace Prize, yet little or nothing was actually done to help free the
women in captivity – or to help those who had escaped to safety in the
West.
I first visited Iraq soon after ISIS swept across the Nineveh Plains
and attacked the Yazidi villages around Sinjar in 2014. It was truly
shocking to return for my sixth visit, just two months ago, and find
Yazidi families still living in open abandoned buildings in Erbil,
exactly as they had been in early 2015.
I spoke to some Yazidi women, all traumatised after losing relatives
and friends to ISIS. I asked them what they wanted. All of them, without
exception, wanted to leave Iraq. When asked where they wanted to go,
their response was very simple: “Anywhere.”
Yet as the media weep tears of outrage at the conditions those who
enslaved these women and children are experiencing, and as leaders make
political capital, it is worth asking: how many persecuted Christians
and Yazidis have been granted asylum in Britain and the United States?
The answer is a shockingly small number. According to figures
released to the Barnabas Fund under the UK Freedom of Information Act,
of the 7,060 Syrian refugees recommended for resettlement in the UK in
2017, only 25 were Christian and only seven were Yazidis. The US,
despite the great promises of the Trump administration (which many Iraqi
Christians believed), took in 50 per cent fewer Christians in 2018 than
in 2017.
It is, to use the phrase of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in a different
context, “cheap grace” to talk about mercy and forgiveness while
ignoring justice. So far, there has been little evidence of contrition
on the part of those who enslaved, tortured and allowed their husbands
to rape their female and child sex slaves.
British or US citizens who go to fight for an enemy are guilty of
treason. Justice must be tempered with mercy, but the lack of attention
and care for the victims of those who perpetrated these crimes is a
scandal.
Those who suffered so much, and for so long, are without a voice,
while the guilty are portrayed as victims. Failing to prosecute and
punish those who committed not only crimes against humanity, but also
genocide, would be to brutalise the true victims a second time. It will
demonstrate before the world that the suffering of these women and
children did not matter.
It is a false compassion to weep for criminals while failing their
victims – those who, for example, were not freed when the coalition
forces allowed ISIS to retreat from Raqqa, taking their captured Yazidi
and Christian sex slaves with them.
In December 2016, several Iraqi bishops were denied visas to Britain.
They were not seeking to emigrate, merely to attend the consecration of
a new Syriac Orthodox church, in the presence of the Prince of Wales.
A few months later, in Erbil, I asked Archbishop Nicodemus Daoud, the
Syriac Orthodox Archbishop of Mosul, why he thought Britain had denied
him a visa. Without hesitation, and without a smile, he responded:
“Because I’m not ISIS.”
When Christian, Yazidi and other victims of genocide are treated with
the compassion and generous welcome they deserve, perhaps it will be
time to ask how their torturers are to be mercifully punished.
Fr. Benedict Kiely is the founder of Nasarean.org, which helps the persecuted Christians of the Middle East