The Middle East Is Burning

Apocalyptic photo of Syrians besieging UN humanitarian aid workers for food. One of the weapons of the Syrian government is blockades, preventing food, medicine and other staples from reaching civilians trapped inside. Critics said this photo was simply photoshopped. However, the photographer also produced video footage – which cannot be photoshopped – of this tragic scene. (Photo: APIMAGES)

By Shira Sorko-Ram

As I write on this hot summer day in Israel, the entire Middle East is on fire.

Last month, Hamas terrorists kidnapped and shot three Jewish teenagers. They were scarcely buried when six alleged Jewish terrorists kidnapped and burned alive a Palestinian teenager. Arab riots broke out across the land. Through these acts of murder, literally overnight, years of co-existence between Israeli Jews and Arabs evaporated. For the first time since the trauma of the second intifada dissipated in 2005, the Jewish-Arab conflict began spiraling out of control

Hundreds of rockets from Gaza rained down and exploded in villages and towns in Israel’s south day and night. Israel forces had no other choice but to again penetrate the Hamas strongholds purposely burrowed deeply in the heaviest populated civilian areas – and fight for Israel’s survival while the world clamored loudly that Israel stop “overreacting.”

But even this scenario is nothing to compare with what is going on in Syria and now in Iraq. As the world knows, ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) is on the move – beheading, shooting, crucifying, and raping human beings who are considered by them infidels. Of all their “enemies,” Christians are the most hated. Iraqi and Syrian churches are being burned to the ground, Christians slaughtered.

At this moment, Syria is no longer a state. It has imploded. Some 12,000,000 Syrians are displaced. Men, women and children have fled their homes, their jobs and given up all hope of a normal life. Food prices have tripled and assorted armed bands roam many parts of the country unpoliced. A generation of children is growing up in a moral moonscape of shortage and crime, never even entering, let alone graduating, elementary school. (Jerusalem Post, 16 May 2014)

The war is depleting the very fiber of Syrian society. More and more of those Syrians from the upper class are fleeing the country. Doctors and professionals are escaping the hell. The damage of such a flight is immeasurable, as the country’s commercial class and professional elite are leaving, and only the poorest remain – those who have no means to leave.

“For most of the Syrian women and girls who have fled the genocidal horrors of Syria’s civil war, rape – whether by pro-government or rebel forces – has been identified as one of the primary reasons for their exodus from that war-torn country. (frontpagemag.com;1 Feb 2013; Frank Crimi)

Journalist Crimi reports, “Now, having supposedly escaped that nightmarish reality, Syrian girls as young as 12 years are being subjected to a new horror, being auctioned off by their families to unknown Muslim men for use as sexual toys in coerced and forced early marriages.” (Ibid.)

The grinding poverty of Syrian refugees is causing parents to sell their young girls in order not to starve to death. Disturbingly, in most cases, the younger the girl, the more desirable she is in the eyes of the intended pedophilic groom.

Crimi describes the incredible licentiousness of Islamic religious law: Newly purchased child brides who are virgins are taken to rented houses outside the camps by their “husbands.” “After having their fill of sex, the men will quickly divorce the girls, in many cases often only days and even hours after the nuptials.” (Ibid.)

According to a charity office that works with Syrian refugees, many Syrian girls have been impregnated and abandoned in this way.

In Islam, a widow or single woman with children is a burden to her extended family. Their lives are worth little to anyone. There are many articles documenting the hordes of Muslim men who prey on these women and their young daughters.

This crime against young girls metastasizes because Sharia law allows, actually encourages, this form of pedophilia. These “marriages” were concocted by Islamic religious law which gives legitimacy to short pedophilic dalliances.

The Islamic male, when he tires of his sexual spree, often after a few days or weeks, returns the child to her parents. The girl’s life in “conservative Islamic culture” – that is conservative only for women – is forever ruined.

Older Islamic men marrying young girls originates from Islam’s leader and role model, Mohammed, who is said to have married some 15 women, including a nine-year-old named Aisha when he was 49 years old. The pedophilic aspect of this relationship has institutionalized such marriages within Islam.

Arab critics of this practice acknowledge these temporary marriages are little more than dressed-up prostitution. Others describe it as nothing more than licensed rape.

But Jordanian journalists report from the Syrian refugee camps that “people do not talk about anything else these days but about Syrian girls you could marry for one or two hundred dollars.”(Ibid.)

Muslims Are Turning to Yeshua by the Thousands and Hundreds of Thousands

However, God has not at all forgotten the Arab people.

Last week I attended an Evangelism Conference for Muslims. I heard Father Zakaria Botros who is daily seeing multitudes of Muslims come to faith in Yeshua the Messiah. He spoke of how his 90-minute daily satellite TV program is reaching over 50 million listeners every day in Muslim lands! He is an Egyptian Coptic Christian who has been exiled from his country. The jihadists find him so dangerous that they have put a bounty on his head for $60 million.

With a $60,000,000 bounty on his head by Islamists, Father Zakaria preaches daily to 50,000,000 Muslims by satellite TV.

He and the other evangelists at the conference reaching Muslims are absolutely fearless. Father Zakaria reports there are two and a half million converts to Christianity in Egypt, a similar number in Pakistan and five million in Sudan. He says in the last three decades, more Muslims have come to believe in salvation through Jesus Christ than in the last 14 centuries of Islam.

Even in hard-core Islamic Arab nations God is on the move. Joel Rosenberg, prize-winning author and founder of the Joseph Fund, reports that each year 10,000 Muslims are becoming Christians in Algeria, 35,000 a year in Morocco, 50,000 in Saudi Arabia. Some 6,000,000 a year in Africa are converting to Christianity! These bold evangelists believe by faith that Islam is collapsing.

To me the most important thing about understanding biblical prophecy is to be able to clearly see what God is doing right now! Israeli Arabs and Jews have been given an open door together with Jordanian Christians to help the struggling Syrian refugees – who see no hope for their lives.

This is the moment God has given us. This is a big crack in the door to reach the Muslim people. We can touch the lives of multitudes who are looking for hope and need our help. Let’s penetrate this huge dark harvest field and bring hope and healing to the Syrian refugees scattered throughout Jordan – bringing them food, clothing and the Gospel!