The destruction by the entity known as the Islamic State (ISIS) in August 2015, of the over-1,500-year-old Syrian Catholic Monastery of Mar Elian, in Qaryatain, Syria – and of the even older ruins of the Temple of Ba'al Shameen at Palmyra – attracted worldwide condemnation and, as ISIS probably intended, considerable media attention.[1]
Churches, monasteries, and synagogues existed from the very first caliphate of Abu Bakr in 632 all the way through to the abolishment of the Ottoman caliphate in 1924. Sometimes favored, often persecuted, Christian communities existed and even flourished all throughout that period from the time of the Righteously Guided Caliphs[2] that ISIS claims to follow and revere.
The relationship between Salafi jihadists groups and local Christian populations has been a complicated one. While Al-Qaeda has always exhorted jihadis to keep their focus on their main enemy in the U.S., local groups have often targeted religious minorities. Some of the Egyptian jihadist groups of the 1970s which eventually became part of Al-Qaeda focused particularly on killing and robbing Coptic Christians, and gave justifications for doing so that were very similar to those that ISIS would later use.[3]
Still, as recently as September 2013, Al-Qaeda's Al-Sahab Media issued a document titled "General Guidelines for Jihad," in English, Arabic, and Urdu, which called for focusing on terrorism against the Crusader West but also for avoiding "meddling with Christian, Sikh and Hindu communities living in Muslim lands."[4] Interestingly, it also called for avoiding "fighting the deviant sects such as Rawafidh [pejorative term for Shi'a], Ismailis, Qadianis, and deviant Sufis, except if they fight the Ahl Al-Sunnah." Of course, these guidelines were often ignored by Al-Qaeda franchises, and by September 2013, Al-Qaeda and ISIS had broken off relations and gone their separate ways.
Islamic State "Abolishes" Pact of Omar
Al-Qaeda in Iraq and its successor the Islamic State of Iraq (ISI) directed most of their sectarian focus on the Shi'a; however, as early as March 2007, the State's proto-caliph, "Commander of the Faithful" Abu Omar Al-Baghdadi (Hamid Al-Zawi) described Christians as fair game:
"We find that the sects of the People of the Book and others from the Sabians and so in the State of Islam today are people of war who qualify for no protection, for they have transgressed against whatever they agreed to in many countless ways, and if they want peace and security then they must start a new era with the State of Islam according to (Caliph) Omar's stipulations [the historic "Covenant" of Caliph Omar with Christians] that they have annulled."[5]
As Iraq scholar Nibras Kazimi has noted, this first Al-Baghdadi laid claim to authority based on the implementation of an aggressive Salafi agenda which claimed to have transformed Iraq, in 2007, into "one of the greatest nations on the face of the earth in maintaining monotheism, for there is no polytheistic Sufism being propagated, or shrines being visited, or innovated festivals being celebrated, or candles being lit, or a pilgrimage being made to a pagan totem, for the people of Iraq have destroyed these shrines with their own hands so that Allah will be worshiped alone."[6] Here then is the vividly illustrated Salafi agenda that ISIS would implement in Syria and Iraq as it took advantage of anarchy and dysfunction in large parts of both states.
Islamic State statements also blamed Arab Christians for promoting the concept of Arabism at the expense of Islam, an ironic charge given the claims about the role of Iraqi Baathists in the organization.[7] Arab nationalism is, of course, a principle tenet of Ba'athism. Some months after that announcement, gunmen killed Chaldean Catholic priest Ragheed Aziz Ghanni and three of his deacons in Mosul after they refused to either close their church or convert to Islam. In February 2008, the Chaldean Catholic Archbishop of Mosul Msgr. Paulos Faraj Rahho was kidnapped and killed by Islamic State gunmen.[8]
The general atmosphere of violence and insecurity in Iraq after the 2003 invasion meant that individuals of all faiths were kidnapped and killed, sometimes for motives that seemed less than clear. But Iraqi Christian sites were targeted early on, with six churches in Baghdad and Mosul attacked with car bombs in August 2004.[9]
ISI suffered major personnel losses in April 2010, which led to Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi (Ibrahim Al-Badri) taking over in May 2010. The new leader had an even more extensive Salafi pedigree than his predecessor, with an extended family with deep regional Salafi ties extending into Saudi Arabia's own Salafi religious elite.[10]