Remaining Mosul Christians forced to convert to Islam: Iraqi official

25 Christian families remain trapped in Iraq’s second city following end of ISIS deadline to flee
by Dalshad Abdullah
Wednesday, 23 Jul, 2014

Excerpt:
ISIS had announced a weekend deadline for Mosul’s Christians—the majority of whom are Assyrian—to renounce their faith and convert to Islam or leave the city, forcing thousands to flee with few or no possessions.

“Around 25 Christian families remain trapped in Mosul. They are families with sick or elderly members who have not been able to get out of the city. They now find themselves under siege by ISIS,” Duraid Hikmat Tobia, an advisor to the governor of Nineveh, told Asharq Al-Awsat.

“Some of these families were attacked by militants and taken to ISIS-run Islamic Shari’a law courts. They were given the choice between [converting to] Islam or execution.”

Radical Islamists usually ask non-Muslims to choose between either paying the jizya (a tax levied on non-Muslims) or converting to Islam. However, ISIS appears to have gone one step further, threatening Mosul’s remaining Christians with death if they do not convert.

“Five families have converted to Islam so far,” Tobia said.

ISIS militants have also set fire to churches and other Christian sites, including burial grounds, in Iraq’s second city. Local and international media outlets have reported that ISIS militants have confiscated the belongings of fleeing Iraqi Christians, while eyewitnesses said that messages telling any remaining Christians to leave the city were broadcast on loudspeakers from the city’s mosques on Friday. the rest

Islam’s Religious Exemption From Criticism
...The truth of the matter is that Islam is a hybrid: it’s both a political ideology and a religion. And although the political side of Islam may turn out to be every bit as dangerous as Nazism or communism, the religious side provides considerable protection from criticism. Because of its religious nature, it seems improper to engage Islam in the kind of ideological warfare the West waged against fascism and communism.

Yet the threat to the West and to the rest of the world is, by all appearances, increasing. Egyptians, Nigerians, Kenyans, Pakistanis, Filipinos, and others are finding it difficult to arrest the spread of radical Islam within their borders. In Europe, Islamization moves on apace, and no one has found the formula for resisting it. In Iraq, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has proclaimed the creation of a new caliphate state, declared himself caliph, and has called on Muslims worldwide to join him in waging war against infidels. We hear a lot about all the different forms of Islam, but the idea of the caliphate is that there should be only one unified Islam. Like communism, the caliphate is intended to be a borderless community—a trans-national and ever-expanding empire of true believers. That’s because, like communism, Islam aspires to be a universal belief system...

ISIS Kills 31 People in Baghdad Suicide Bombing; Iraq Bishops Call on Gov't to 'Stop Catastrophe' and Protect Christians
...Iraq's bishops, who addressed al-Maliki in their appeal, called on "people of conscience in Iraq and around the world" to put pressure on militants to put a stop to "the destruction of churches and monasteries, manuscripts, relics and all the Christian heritage, priceless Iraqi and international heritage. "...