If you’ve been troubled as we have by the Islamic State’s recent mass murders, forced slavery and oppression of Christians and other ethnic and religious minorities in Iraq, please consider sending life-saving financial support through this trusted friend of the DNA. (Click here to read updated news on this emergency.)
Dr. George Grant, a friend of the DNA and pastor at Parish Presbyterian Church, has been working for about 15 years in Northern Iraq and Kurdistan which describes as “the very last sanctuary for Christians in the Muslim Middle East.” He recently established the “Nuun Fund” to speed desperately needed money to his trusted colleagues helping victims of the Islamic State in this area.
Nuun (ن) is the first letter of Arabic the word Nasara (نصارى or Nazarene) and has been used by Muslims for centuries as a mark of shame against Christians. Today, in Iraq and Syria, militants use it to stigmatize and persecute the few remaining Christians in the region. In the same way the Nazis used the Star of David to identify Jews for persecution and eventually extermination, these Muslim terrorists use nuun for their new Ji’hadi holocaust.
It is blazing hot in this area–more than 100 degrees Fahrenheit–and many of these brothers and sisters literally are penniless, having been stripped of all their physical valuables upon fleeing their homes. Even those who work for the government cannot access their own money because the Islamic State now controls the banks.
According to an August 10 news story from a Kurdish media network, “apart from UN organizations that came to take a look, no other aid group has been spotted” (read more).
The churches are overwhelmed and are on their own.
“The churches are also stretched to the limit,” the report goes on to say, “as Iraqi Kurdistan is housing over a million refugees and internally displaced people from Syria, the rest of Iraq and now thousands of minorities from areas where IS has gained ground.”
“This cannot last too long,” one local seminary student commented in that same news story.
Let us help carry this crushing burden of our Christian brothers and sisters, giving generously and even sacrificially during this emergency.
