Iraq

Muslims bring church back to life in Iraq after being destroyed by ISIS: “We want Christians to feel welcome”

“We want to tell Christians that this is still their city, that they are welcome here”, Ziad says from Mosul (Iraq). He leads a group of volunteers who worked to restore the city’s oldest church. ISIS’ terrorists had destroyed it while they ruled over Mosul, the same way they destroyed its most significant mosque.

Facts & figures

Trump in the UN: “Protecting religious freedom is one of my highest priorities”

US president Donald Trump has called upon all nations to “join” the United States in the “urgent moral duty” of protecting the religious freedom. He said so in a conference he led on this matter at the United Nations summit where secretary general Antonio Guterres accompanied him.

Terrorism

Attacks against mosques are more usual than you might think: they are committed by anti-Muslim terrorists and also by groups like ISIS

The attacks on two mosques in Christchurch (New Zealand) on March 15 left 49 dead and more than 40 people injured. In recent years there have been several attacks on mosques in the West, but these temples are also a usual target of terrorist groups like ISIS in Muslim-majority countries.

Facts & figures

1,700 ISIS members have returned to their home in Europe after migrating to the ‘caliphate’

They left home to join the self-declared ‘Islamic State’ in Syria or Iraq. They are originally from 33 other countries; 15 of them European. The UK is the European state with more returnees, while France is the one with more foreign fighters who join ISIS on the ground, according to a new study.

Terrorism

ISIS’ defeat in Raqqa stronghold is not as
game-changing as you might think

The loss of its last stronghold hinders the terrorist narrative of being a calling itself an “Islamic State”, but for some time now its territorial control had been already reducing and altering its strategy. Now the question in Raqqa is who will rebuild the city in the midst of the complex Syrian war.