ISIS

Aaron Tugendhaft says all acts of image-breaking are also acts of image-making.

The 21 men murdered in 2015 will be remembered long after the era of ISIL is forgotten.

Several churches in Minneapolis–St. Paul have funded in-prison education for young men convicted of ISIS involvement and also helped their families. It hasn't been without controversy. 

The history and struggles of the Nigerian movement known as Boko Haram are more complicated than they first appear.

The humanitarian plight of Syrian refugees and the terrorist threat of ISIS seem likely to dominate the cable news channels for weeks to come. But it’s unclear whether Christian preachers will continue to discuss these issues now that the season of Advent has arrived. 

On the surface there is little connection between ISIS’s campaign of terror and a season that invites us to prepare for the return of Christ. 

As Rusty Foster would say, the takes are in. Everyone’s got something to say about global terrorism, ISIS, and refugees, and some of it is even worth reading.

If you’re only going to read one longer piece, I recommend this one by Scott Atran and Nafees Hamid.

A friend recently announced that he had given up hope for the human race. There are days when I find myself thinking about this a lot.

ISIS’s primary targets remain Muslims it views as apostate. But a new generation of Christian martyrs is arising as well.

With an authorization looming in Congress for our ongoing war against the so-called Islamic State, a muddled conversation has sprung up about the group’s relationship to mainstream Islam, its relationship to American and European policy in the region, and the military and political measures needed to counter it. Graeme Wood interviewed scholars and activists to shed light on what ISIS is trying to accomplish and why. His resulting story—a long tour through the theology, history, and practice of this particularly brutal offshoot of Salafist Islam—is alarming, not least to Wood himself.

Chuck Todd may be right: Obama doesn’t like the National Prayer Breakfast, so he uses his speech to stir up trouble there. I don’t like it either. But it’s astonishing that this counts as trouble.

"I sell exclusively to fellow Shi'ites and to Christians," says one Lebanese arms dealer. "Demand from Christians has increased immensely."

Shorter Peter Berger: Sometimes when liberals make public advocacy statements, they use the phrase “speaking truth to power.” This started in the 50s and got irritating by the 70s.

The question isn't how frightening ISIS is. It's what actual threat it poses—and how to contain that threat without causing more harm.

“Why is the world silent while Christians are being slaughtered in the Middle East and Africa?” asks Ronald S. Lauder. The World Jewish Congress president frames the question in a larger paint-by-numbers argument defending Israel’s assault on Gaza and criticizing the moral instincts of “beautiful celebrities,” reporters, and the U.N. who have not responded adequately to the brutality of Boko Haram and ISIS.

An argument like Lauder's is liable to predictable demands for greater American military involvement in the region. But the silence he names is real.

Extremists seem to be in charge everywhere. ISIS has taken over a huge geographic area and forced Christians to leave their homes or convert.

Three faiths esteem Jonah, whom God sent to the city now called Mosul.