Tagged: Daesh

Turkey slams French figures demanding change in Quran

(HURRIYET DAILY NEWS) — Turkey’s EU Affairs Minister Ömer Çelik slammed a French manifesto proposing the removal of some verses from the Quran, saying those 300 prominent French figures demanding the changes were as “bigoted” as members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) who infer violence from the holy book, state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

“This is the most striking example of intellectual violence and barbarism. Whoever these people are and whatever they have been doing up till now, they will be written at the beginning of the history of bigotry,” Çelik said on Twitter.

“Barbarism is intellectually and politically centered in the modern world,” he added.

Çelik drew parallel between the “barbaric and immoral” proposal and the ideology of ISIL.

“They could not tell in a better way that they are the closest ideological relatives of Daesh. But this approach, which will be the subject of political psychiatry, reveals how barbarism has risen in the midst of Europe, and how this mentality, at least as dangerous as Daesh, keeps itself behind certain concepts,” he said, using the Arabic name for ISIL.

“These are the most dangerous ones; those who conceal themselves behind an intellectual and political image. This is the mentality of those who are so-called anti-violence, but in fact they worship the bigotry and violence. These 300 French figures are the same as Daesh which infers violence from the humanity’s guide Quran,” Çelik added.

On April 21, 300 prominent French figures, including former President Nicolas Sarkozy and former Prime Minister Manuel Valls signed a manifesto published in the French daily Le Parisien and demanded some parts of the Quran, which they claimed have included violence and anti-Semitic references, be removed.

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Turning kids into killers: Islamic State creates lost generation of Iraqi youth

(MIDDLE EAST EYE) — Mosul, Iraq – Hasan thought he had seen everything after fighting Islamic State in Fallujah in Tikrit. Then he came to Mosul, and a boy no older then 10 tried to kill him.

“It was utterly shocking,” said the 40-year-old soldier, dragging nervously on a cigarette as he remembers the child among a group of young IS suicide bombers.

“I found myself in front of children full of hatred. They all had explosive belts and they were all ready to die. It isn’t anything like killing an adult. But we had to do it.

“It’s a cruelty that has no end. For us it is a violent pain, we know we have to fight against children who have been indoctrinated in the name of a sick religion.”

This is the reality of war in northern Iraq, where IS is throwing everything – and everyone – at Iraqi forces as they slowly take back Mosul and the surrounding areas in a bitter war that has destroyed the very social fabric of the city.

Children have been spared nothing: poverty, malnutrition and cruelty under IS control; then forced onto the frontlines to be used as spotters, fighters, human shields and suicide bombers as the battles began to rage.

These are tactics that have destroyed family life in the city and its surrounding villages, where IS scooped up youngsters to teach them the ways of their “Caliph”.

In Hamam al-Alil, south of Mosul, Amir tells Middle East Eye of his own son, Mushak, who swore allegiance aged 11 soon after IS arrived in 2014.

“My children had never gone to school,” he said, his face a contortion of fatigue and pain.

“When Daesh arrived my son was a boy full of anger, he could not read or write. They taught him the hatred of the infidels. They taught him to kill.

“In two-and-a-half years he became a soldier of the Islamic police. He wasn’t even 14. I tried to stop him swearing allegiance to the Caliph, and he told me: ‘Shut up or I’ll cut your head’.”

“One day he came home with a gun and threatened me – an armed child who comes into the house saying I cannot criticise Daesh – and broke his mother’s arm as she begged him to stop.”

All villages had recruiters, said Amir, adding that more than half of the children of Hamam al-Alil have been recruited, many of them never been seen again.

Amir has lost his son: “I’m not scared he is dead. I do not care. Mushak is the shame of our family.

“Now here everybody hate us, we are desperate, we can not even go to the shop, we live locked in the house, for fear of being lynched in the street. We lost everything, a son, home, dignity, everything.”

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Yazidi victim of ISIS genocide: ‘They beheaded children with axes’

(CNS NEWS) — By Michael W. Chapman

A Yazidi mother and one of her sons who survived the Islamic State’s attack on Sinjar and surrounding villages in northern Iraq in August 2014, said that ISIS “shot and killed” many people, kidnapped young girls for sex, filmed the abuse and texted it to the girls’ families, and even “beheaded children with axes.”

The mother also disclosed that her husband “felt so helpless” that he committed suicide and that two of her sons, in shock and anguish, “painted their faces” with their dead father’s blood.

In the video by Dr. Hawar Moradi, who worked with the Yazidis in the fall of 2014, and which is posted on the website of Yezidi Human Rights Organization – International, the mother explains what happened as the Yazidi men started to run out of ammunition while defending their community from ISIS.

“After that the ammunition was finished,” the mother said. “We had to flee. Many didn’t have a car and as they fled on feet they were shot and killed. Many people were killed.”

“They [ISIS] took by force women and girls,” she said. “They cut off the head of the children. They caused us unbearable suffering. May God punish them. He [the woman’s husband] was a soldier and had a Kalashnikov [rifle].”

“They called and told us that they [ISIS] had abducted our girls,” said the mother. “People were talking about children dying of thirst, hunger, and being beheaded by ISIS. They abused our girls and women. They filmed while abusing our girls and women and sent it to our phones.”

“They tied their hands and led them away in cars,” she said. “They beheaded children with axes.”

She then explained that her husband had been 40 years old. “He felt so helpless and angry,” she said, that “he shot himself to death.”

One of her sons, in the video, then said, “We [Yazidis] were all alone. Arabs were all around us. Shingal [Sinjar] was alone and surrounded all around by Arabs. Daesh [ISIS] was on the hunt for the Yazidis. They came and surrounded us.”

“My father committed suicide because he felt helpless,” said the boy. “I and my brother touched his blood with our hands and painted our faces with it.”

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