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This must stop.”
That’s what Cardinal Dolan said after the massacre of 21 Egyptian Christians in Libya by Islamic State militants, whose murderous path across large swaths of Iraq and Syria has shocked the world.
Since the beheading of those young men, who were slaughtered only because they were Christian, the militants—members of the self-declared caliphate known as ISIS—have continued their assault through territories where ancient civilizations once thrived.
Last week came the news that they seized nearly 300 Assyrian Christians, including children and women, in one of the world’s oldest Christian communities, where people still speak a version of the Aramaic language used by Jesus.
Along with that were images flashed around the globe of militants in Mosul, Iraq—power tools in hand—destroying ancient Mesopotamian artifacts in a museum that had not yet opened to the public.
Cardinal Dolan, writing in an op-ed piece in the New York Post, called the campaign of terror an orchestrated fanaticism that sees Christianity, Judaism and any religion of peace as the enemy.
“They threaten civilization, everything that is decent and noble about humanity,” he wrote.
Pope Francis, speaking out forcefully after the beheading of the Egyptian men, Coptic Christians who went to Libya seeking work, called the victims “martyrs” whose blood “is a testimony which cries out to be heard.”
Indeed it does.
And it’s time for the people of the Middle East, and their governments, to condemn this barbarism and to act strongly against it in their communities to protect people under direct threat.
There’s been some of that condemnation already from Jordan, after the militants released one of their horrific videos showing a captured Jordanian pilot being burned alive earlier this year.
Egypt, too, responded to the beheadings of the 21 Christians with airstrikes against Islamic targets in Libya.
It’s time for Islamic leaders, both Sunni and Shiite, to take a strong stand as well, and denounce ISIS for perverting one of the world’s largest religions, one built on a foundation of daily prayer, pilgrimage and charity.
As the cardinal pointed out, the Catholic bishops in Ireland bravely stood up 40 years ago to say the Church did not support car bombings and attacks against civilians by the Irish Republican Army, which perversely identified itself as “Catholic.”
“And now we have peace in Northern Ireland,” the cardinal said.
We’d like to add another concern, one that has surfaced just in the last few days, and that is the number of young people attracted to the militant groups—not just from countries in the Middle East but also from democratic countries in Europe and even from the United States. Young men, in particular, but also growing numbers of girls, are traveling or attempting to travel to Islamic-led territories where they hope to sign up.
This is a troubling development, and one that has to be stopped where it starts. Families, communities and local mosques need to be on guard.
With all of that, and with the Christian world in the midst of Lent, we’re issuing a call to our fellow Catholics to remember in their prayers their brothers and sisters in faith in far-off troubled lands.
As Cardinal Dolan wrote so eloquently, we too have “tears in our eyes, a lump in our throat and a burning in our heart.”
