Don’t Ignore ISIS Murders

Opinion

Opinion by Ken Herron:I lived in Muslim countries for close to five years and was well treated and made a number of friends. I am still in touch with some of them from time to time even now. There are Muslims that are just like us and do not wish to harm anyone.

On the other hand there are Muslims that are frustrated with their life and wish to strike out at someone and blame them for their living conditions. They are followers of Allah and the Prophet Mohammed who they believe want to make them happy but the infidels are preventing this from happening. Christians and Jews are the infidels.

In 2004 the group that calls themselves ISIS today was a small rebel army trying to fight to keep control of Iraq. It was a Sunni Muslim Group that claimed allegiance to Al Quida and called themselves AQI or Al-Quida in Iraq. In 2006 the Sunni Groups in Iraq came together as Mujahideen Shura Council for a short period until it merged into a group by the name of the Islamic State of Iraq. The ISI group was founded by a Sheik who had taken the name of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Abu Bakr had been a student at the Islamic University in Baghdadi and received a Ph. D. at the conclusion of his studies. In April, 2014, they joined with the Sunni Groups that were fighting in Syria and extended their name to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant but the world has called them ISIS for Iraq and Syria. Under Abu Bakr the group became very brutal and cruel with its murders and suicide attacks. In February, 2014, Al-Quida declared that they were not associated with ISIS because of the cruelty and the lack of consultation with Al-Quida.

Before the Prophet Mohammed died he declared that there would never be another Prophet to lead the Islamic Believers and that they would hereafter be led by a Caliphate. Although the Shiites look to the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran as their leader there is no one leader for the Sunnis. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared himself to be the Caliphate over Islam. The Prophet Mohammed was cruel to those that he considered to be Infidels. He had 700 Jews slaughtered in one night in Modena because they would not follow him. Many Muslims believe that Abu Bakr is the new Caliphate and have joined him in his effort to establish a new Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. Since that time groups in the Egyptian Sinai and in Libya have formed and sworn allegiance to ISIS and are followers of Abu Bakr. National Sunni Groups such as the ones in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan are standing against Abu Bakr. While the Shiites are loyal to the Ayatollah in Iran, the Sunnis are independent and each Mosque can operate on its own authority.

The Administration of the United States has stood by and allowed some of our citizens to be murdered and their deaths recorded on video and shown to the world. We have not made any effort to make ISIS pay for the crimes. A Jordanian pilot was tortured and killed and the King of

Jordan immediately sent his airplanes into the area and he reported that they had killed 5,000 of the ISIS followers. This number was surely exaggerated but he gave an immediate response. Our President has stated that we are not at war with Islam and we will never be at war with Islam. Since this group has Islam in the name this could be one of the reasons that our nation has not responded.

ISIS has killed a number of Christians, Kurds and Shiite Muslims in Iraq. They recently took 21 Coptic Christians from Egypt into Libya and cut their throats in a recorded public slaughter where each Christian was killed by a separate followers of ISIS. The Coptic Christians are not converts from Islam. They are a part of a church group that goes back to about 400 a. d. They are called Coptic Christians because they originally spoke the Coptic language which was spoken in the Roman Era of the Caesars. Today they speak Arabic. About 10% of the Egyptian population belong to churches associated with the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. There are about 800,000 more that belong to Coptic Catholic and Coptic Protestant churches. The Muslim Brotherhood has also been persecuting the Coptic Christians in Egypt.
Since the 21 Christians were slaughtered in Libya, there were 45 people captured and burned to death in their compound back in Iraq.
Iraq has never operated under a Democracy before this time and they had no experience in establishing local democratic governments and leaders. We pulled our forces out of the country much too soon and allowed these things to take place. Had we stayed in Iraq for a longer period we could have eliminated all of these groups when they were small and allowed Democracy to work in Iraq.

Under most other administrations of the United States Governments our forces would have been in Libya soon after our Ambassador was killed and we would have immediately gone after those in Iraq with men on the ground to punish those that killed our people. Our air force, our drones and our rockets can help to protect our troops and we should be able to move a military unit of foot soldiers through the ISIS and stop these senseless killings. In spite of the reductions in our military by the current Obama Administration we still have the strongest military in the entire world.

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