ICC Note: Incidents of persecution are often viewed as isolated, one-off incidents. In a regular series, a collection of incidents are examined. These included persecution that comes from both Islamic jihadist groups like ISIS to mob violence that assaulted churches, to incitement from respected universities.

05/13/2015 Middle East (Gatestone Institute) Throughout February, members of the largest Christian minority in the Middle East, the Copts, were slaughtered.

The Islamic State released a video in mid-February depicting 21 poverty-stricken Coptic Christians being decapitated in Libya, where these men had gone to find work. While holding their victims’ bodies down, Islamic State members shoved their fingers in the Christians’ eyes, craned their heads back, and sliced away at their throats with knives — all in the name of Allah and Islam, even as the slaughtered called out to the “Lord Jesus Christ.”

Over one month before the video appeared, the BBC had falsely reported that the majority of those now-slaughtered Copts were “released.” (Such inaccurate portrayals that seek to downplay the Muslim persecution of Christians are standard for the BBC.)

In the video, the lead executioner waves his dagger at the camera while saying, “Oh people, recently you have seen us on the hills of as-Sham and Dabiq’s plain [Syrian regions], chopping off the heads that have been carrying the cross for a long time. And today, we are on the south of Rome, on the land of Islam, Libya, sending another message.” He concluded by declaring: “We will fight you [Christians] until Christ descends, breaks the cross and kills the pig” (all eschatological actions ascribed to the Muslim “Christ,” Isa).

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