The Islamic State is targeting Christians in the Middle East - and these Americans are doing something about it

March 18, 2015

Writer

It's no secret that ISIS is targeting Christians in the Middle East as they seek to build a caliphate. Last night, Glenn was joined by Matthew VanDyke and Johnnie Moore, both of whom are working to protect Christians who live in the Middle East and are coming under attack by radical Islamists.

Glenn: I want to introduce you to Johnnie Moore. He’s been on the program before. He’s a friend and just a really solid guy. He’s the author of Defying ISIS: Preserving Christianity in the Place of Its Birth and in Your Own Backyard . I want you to get this book. This book was just sped up by HarperCollins, right?

Johnnie: Yeah, that’s right.

Glenn: Just sped up because the crisis is getting so bad in the Middle East, and as it says here on the back, “Has a Christian Holocaust begun?” The answer is yes, it has. I was just talking to one of the head guys at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. I’ve never had a Jewish person say this to me ever before and especially from Simon Wiesenthal. He said, “Glenn, please, will you do me a favor?” I said, “Sure.” He said, “Will you stop talking about the persecution of Jews?” I was stunned, and I said, “Anti-Semitism is through the roof.” He said, “The Holocaust is happening now.” I don’t think he used the word Holocaust.

He said the real persecution right now far more than the Jews is the Christians. We’ve got to stand behind the Christians right now. This is what your book talks about.

Johnnie: Yeah, I mean, Glenn, this is a once-in-a-thousand-year crisis we’re witnessing in the Middle East. We have Christian communities that have thrived for nearly 2,000 years. Jesus himself gave the gospel to Thomas. Thomas takes the gospel to Iraq. I mean, this is the place of the birth of Christianity, and we’re watching the full-scale elimination, Nazi-style tactics.

Glenn: Literally Nazi-style tactics.

Johnnie: Literally Nazi-style tactics, I mean, incomprehensible things, and literally most people that are watching this think this came from nowhere this summer. This has been going on since 2003. They’re not starting something, they’re finishing it.

Glenn: Okay, I want to bring somebody else into the conversation. Matthew VanDyke is a guy I cannot wait to meet in person. He is the founder of Sons of Liberty International. Now, this is a nonprofit organization that uses donations to provide resources to local militias in their own defense against ISIS. Let me start with you, Matthew, on this because I have several questions for you, but let me start here. What is it that you have seen, and why is it you’re doing this? I can’t hear. Do we have his audio? Go ahead. Go ahead, Matthew. I think everybody else can hear you.

Matthew: Christianity is under threat of extinction in Iraq. There’s been a large diaspora of the Christian population, and this is really all or nothing for them. They’re either going to be able to provide for their own defense and convince their people to stay or we’re going to see the end of Christianity in Iraq. My motivation for this is Christianity in Iraq as well as ISIS killing two of my friends, James Foley and Steven Sotloff, and me looking for a way to make a contribution and fight against ISIS.

Glenn: So, what is it you’re doing?

Matthew: I formed a company called Sons of Liberty International. We’re not technically a nonprofit organization for various reasons, but we operate on nonprofit principles. We’re revenue neutral, and we rely entirely on public support for our funding. So, people go to the website, sonsoflibertyinternational.com, and play an active role in the war on terrorism. They can give and have a tangible effect on the ground in this fight. The situation with Christians is desperate. We’re in a hurry to help them. We just finished training a battalion of them to defend their lands against ISIS, and the work continues. Really the only thing holding us back now is limited funding.

Glenn: Okay, so Johnnie, put the address of Sons of Liberty down so if anybody is interested…there it is. If you want to donate, you can donate there. Johnnie, tell me, what are the things that are happening that you talk about in the book that people would be surprised to know?

Johnnie: Well, the front page of the ISIS magazine in October was St. Peter’s Square right here in the Vatican, and ISIS superimposed a flag atop the Egyptian obelisk at St. Peter’s Square. They put the ISIS flag there. You know, this isn’t like some accidental thing. This is intentional. Every single time Baghdadi has spoken, every single time, everything he has written, he says 100% of the time that they’re marching all the way to Rome.

What’s really interesting about Baghdadi is he took charge of this organization, ISIS, which was then called the Islamic State of Iraq, in May 2010. His first church bombing was in October 31, 2010. Almost as quickly as he took the reins, he went after these Christian populations. In that particular situation, I mean, he, you know, has these guards dress as security guards. They show up inside this Catholic church in Baghdad, Our Lady of Salvation. They killed 50 people, and they assaulted another 70. There’s so much blood that the blood was splashed on the walls and on the ceiling of the cathedral.

That was in 2010. Since that time, every single church in Iraq and every single church in Syria has built bomb walls around their churches to protect themselves. They’re like sitting ducks. I mean, this is what’s so important about what Sons of Liberty is doing. About 14 days ago, ISIS came in a 40-vehicle convoy, clearly, clearly an ISIS convoy, 40 vehicles. They attacked ten Christian villages along the south of the Khabur River in Syria. They kidnapped 300 Christians.

Now, tell me, if the United States government and the European governments are very serious as they say they are about getting rid of ISIS, how did a 40-car convoy of ISIS heading towards ten unarmed Christian villages not get blown to smithereens? It all happened with the whole world watching, and, you know, there’s Christian after Christian after Christian, pastor after pastor beheaded. Their wives and children have been put on slave markets, I mean, everything you could imagine.

I have a price list, a price list…so hard to even think about. It says Yazidi Christian girls, one to nine years old, $170. They kidnap these Christian families. They say in their literature they want to rape their wives and enslave their daughters. They behead the men. They’ve done it over and over and over again. There were 1.5 million Christians in Iraq in 2003. At best there are 150,000 left, and these are the Christians that have carried the gospel for 2,000 years.

Glenn: How many of them, do either of you know, Matthew, how many do we suspect have been killed?

Matthew: The number is not really known. The number of Christians even left in Iraq is estimated at 400,000, but that number is really not known either. You know, there’s so many missing and disappeared that they’re still counting, but it’s in the thousands.

Glenn: You know, I’ve heard about crucifixions. Is that true? Are they crucifying children? Are they crucifying people? Either of you know?

Johnnie: They’re overt in their literature that they are to do it, and there are pictures of them doing it and, by the way, tons of stories of them beheading children. I mean, I have one story in Defying ISIS, I, you know, literally have gotten so connected on the ground, I get emails and text messages from pastors and Christians in the region. This is the 21st century. There’s no barrier. They can communicate with you,

Glenn: Correct.

Johnnie: And one of these says ISIS came from village to village, and they stopped asking the parents if they were Christians because they thought it would be worse if they asked the children. So, this one particular village, this pastor sends me a text message, and he says, “ISIS is coming to my village. They’ve stopped asking the parents if they’re Christians. They’ve started asking the children. Every single one of the kids has said that they are, and every single one of the kids has been killed in cold blood. Please pray for me.” I don’t know what to say to these parents, and I don’t even know how to call myself a Christian, seeing the faith of these children—every atrocity you can imagine.

Glenn: Matthew, I have seen video of some of the survivors that have lost their house and lost everything and get across the border. They’re in these camps, I think it was in Jordan. I saw interviews with these children, and I could not believe the faith of these children. I couldn’t believe how they spoke of forgiving ISIS. It’s a totally different world. What do you see on the ground when you are there and you’re talking to these people?

Matthew: You know, they’re really distressed. You know, the resilience of them is remarkable. The courage of them is. The morale of them, the morale of the men we’re training, they’re highly motivated to defend their lands. Despite everything they’ve been through and the dangers and the horrific things that ISIS has done, they still want to stand up and defend Christianity in Iraq. The tragedy is a lot of the people that you see who cross the border are never coming back, and this is why Christianity is under threat in Iraq. A lot of the people who are refugees will not return to their homes. They feel like Iraq is never going to be a safe place for them, and that’s why the Christians are trying to organize for their self-defense to demonstrate to people that they can stay so that Christianity isn’t lost in the country. You know, it’s really an uphill battle.

Glenn: Let me ask both of you, and Matthew, I’ll start with you and then to Johnnie, and then we’ll take a break. When you’re talking to the people over there, what is it they say about us and our inaction or our blindness or silence?

Matthew: They’re very frustrated, and they don’t understand why all the talk is about supporting Sunni tribes and supporting the Peshmerga but not supporting them in their aspirations to defend themselves.

Glenn: Johnnie?

Johnnie: They told me they feel forgotten. They sent a message to Christians in the West that said, “You would have no Christianity in the West if it wasn’t for Christians in the East. Your church history is our church history, and what happened? Did you cut off the satellites? How did you know ISIS wasn’t coming into Iraq’s second-largest city, Mosul? How did you know ISIS wasn’t coming in with their pickup trucks with their bolted guns in the back of it with the whole world watching? How did you not know that a city that has had tens of thousands of Christians for centuries would have zero left over?”

Glenn: But we’re not talking about…I mean, yesterday, yesterday, we were talking about ISIS, and behind me my staff had picked…one of the things that was rolling the tape behind me was after the execution. It was on the beach in Libya, and it was the sea blood red, just blood water. I stopped watching the show last night, and I rewound it and looked at it. I thought, “How is that not everywhere? How are people not seeing those things?” But in that same video, the banner up above said, “A warning to the people of the cross.” Our own media is complicit. Our own media is not telling the story.

Johnnie: Yeah, and they’re not doing it because it’s Christian, right? It’s religious, but what they don’t understand is that to ISIS, if you live in this country, you’re Christian. We’re a crusader nation in their mind, and so this threat against Christians in the Middle East is very much a threat against anyone in the United States of America because they all put us in this category. You rest assured if they had the opportunity to do it here, they would do it here.

Glenn: They will.

Johnnie: In fact, they are trying to do it here. In fact, they have tried to do it here. We had a beheading in the United States of America. We had police officers attacked on the subway in Brooklyn. We’re losing track. I mean, today we have an Air Force vet that gets arrested because he’s trying to get to Syria. Last night in Washington, D.C., we had a man charge into the cockpit of an airplane yelling “jihad.” The list goes on. We had an attempted suicide bombing in Washington, D.C., just the guy was a part of an FBI sting and got caught. This is happening, and you can rest assured if ISIS has their chance, they will take the Vatican. They will take over the Vatican. They’ll turn the Sistine Chapel into a prison. They’ll behead all the priests and put their heads on the Bernini statues all across there, and they’ll come here next. That’s why we ought to care about it. If our heart doesn’t pull us to care for these women and children, then at least our self-interest ought to do so, but we’re blind.

Glenn: Okay, so when we come back, I want to, Matthew, get specific on what you’re doing and how you’re training and specifically from both of you what we can do, because people feel helpless—this is too big of a problem. What can we do? When we come back.

Could China OWN our National Parks?

Jonathan Newton / Contributor | Getty Images

The left’s idea of stewardship involves bulldozing bison and barring access. Lee’s vision puts conservation back in the hands of the people.

The media wants you to believe that Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) is trying to bulldoze Yellowstone and turn national parks into strip malls — that he’s calling for a reckless fire sale of America’s natural beauty to line developers’ pockets. That narrative is dishonest. It’s fearmongering, and, by the way, it’s wrong.

Here’s what’s really happening.

Private stewardship works. It’s local. It’s accountable. It’s incentivized.

The federal government currently owns 640 million acres of land — nearly 28% of all land in the United States. To put that into perspective, that’s more territory than France, Germany, Poland, and the United Kingdom combined.

Most of this land is west of the Mississippi River. That’s not a coincidence. In the American West, federal ownership isn’t just a bureaucratic technicality — it’s a stranglehold. States are suffocated. Locals are treated as tenants. Opportunities are choked off.

Meanwhile, people living east of the Mississippi — in places like Kentucky, Georgia, or Pennsylvania — might not even realize how little land their own states truly control. But the same policies that are plaguing the West could come for them next.

Lee isn’t proposing to auction off Yellowstone or pave over Yosemite. He’s talking about 3 million acres — that’s less than half of 1% of the federal estate. And this land isn’t your family’s favorite hiking trail. It’s remote, hard to access, and often mismanaged.

Failed management

Why was it mismanaged in the first place? Because the federal government is a terrible landlord.

Consider Yellowstone again. It’s home to the last remaining herd of genetically pure American bison — animals that haven’t been crossbred with cattle. Ranchers, myself included, would love the chance to help restore these majestic creatures on private land. But the federal government won’t allow it.

So what do they do when the herd gets too big?

They kill them. Bulldoze them into mass graves. That’s not conservation. That’s bureaucratic malpractice.

And don’t even get me started on bald eagles — majestic symbols of American freedom and a federally protected endangered species, now regularly slaughtered by wind turbines. I have pictures of piles of dead bald eagles. Where’s the outrage?

Biden’s federal land-grab

Some argue that states can’t afford to manage this land themselves. But if the states can’t afford it, how can Washington? We’re $35 trillion in debt. Entitlements are strained, infrastructure is crumbling, and the Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service, and National Park Service are billions of dollars behind in basic maintenance. Roads, firebreaks, and trails are falling apart.

The Biden administration quietly embraced something called the “30 by 30” initiative, a plan to lock up 30% of all U.S. land and water under federal “conservation” by 2030. The real goal is 50% by 2050.

That entails half of the country being taken away from you, controlled not by the people who live there but by technocrats in D.C.

You think that won’t affect your ability to hunt, fish, graze cattle, or cut timber? Think again. It won’t be conservatives who stop you from building a cabin, raising cattle, or teaching your grandkids how to shoot a rifle. It’ll be the same radical environmentalists who treat land as sacred — unless it’s your truck, your deer stand, or your back yard.

Land as collateral

Moreover, the U.S. Treasury is considering putting federally owned land on the national balance sheet, listing your parks, forests, and hunting grounds as collateral.

What happens if America defaults on its debt?

David McNew / Stringer | Getty Images

Do you think our creditors won’t come calling? Imagine explaining to your kids that the lake you used to fish in is now under foreign ownership, that the forest you hunted in belongs to China.

This is not hypothetical. This is the logical conclusion of treating land like a piggy bank.

The American way

There’s a better way — and it’s the American way.

Let the people who live near the land steward it. Let ranchers, farmers, sportsmen, and local conservationists do what they’ve done for generations.

Did you know that 75% of America’s wetlands are on private land? Or that the most successful wildlife recoveries — whitetail deer, ducks, wild turkeys — didn’t come from Washington but from partnerships between private landowners and groups like Ducks Unlimited?

Private stewardship works. It’s local. It’s accountable. It’s incentivized. When you break it, you fix it. When you profit from the land, you protect it.

This is not about selling out. It’s about buying in — to freedom, to responsibility, to the principle of constitutional self-governance.

So when you hear the pundits cry foul over 3 million acres of federal land, remember: We don’t need Washington to protect our land. We need Washington to get out of the way.

Because this isn’t just about land. It’s about liberty. And once liberty is lost, it doesn’t come back easily.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

EXPOSED: Why the left’s trans agenda just CRASHED at SCOTUS

Anna Moneymaker / Staff | Getty Images

You never know what you’re going to get with the U.S. Supreme Court these days.

For all of the Left’s insane panic over having six supposedly conservative justices on the court, the decisions have been much more of a mixed bag. But thank God – sincerely – there was a seismic win for common sense at the Supreme Court on Wednesday. It’s a win for American children, parents, and for truth itself.

In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s state ban on irreversible transgender procedures for minors.

The mostly conservative justices stood tall in this case, while Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson predictably dissented. This isn’t just Tennessee’s victory – 20 other red states that have similar bans can now breathe easier, knowing they can protect vulnerable children from these sick, experimental, life-altering procedures.

Anna Moneymaker / Staff | Getty Images

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion, saying Tennessee’s law does not violate the Equal Protection Clause. It’s rooted in a very simple truth that common sense Americans get: kids cannot consent to permanent damage. The science backs this up – Norway, Finland, and the UK have all sounded alarms about the lack of evidence for so-called “gender-affirming care.” The Trump administration’s recent HHS report shredded the activist claims that these treatments help kids’ mental health. Nothing about this is “healthcare.” It is absolute harm.

The Left, the ACLU, and the Biden DOJ screamed “discrimination” and tried to twist the Constitution to force this radical ideology on our kids.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court saw through it this time. In her concurring opinion, Justice Amy Coney Barrett nailed it: gender identity is not some fixed, immutable trait like race or sex. Detransitioners are speaking out, regretting the surgeries and hormones they were rushed into as teens. WPATH – the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the supposed experts on this, knew that kids cannot fully grasp this decision, and their own leaked documents prove that they knew it. But they pushed operations and treatments on kids anyway.

This decision is about protecting the innocent from a dangerous ideology that denies biology and reality. Tennessee’s Attorney General calls this a “landmark victory in defense of America’s children.” He’s right. This time at least, the Supreme Court refused to let judicial activism steal our kids’ futures. Now every state needs to follow Tennessee’s lead on this, and maybe the tide will continue to turn.

Insider alert: Glenn’s audience EXPOSES the riots’ dark truth

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Glenn asked for YOUR take on the Los Angeles anti-ICE riots, and YOU responded with a thunderous verdict. Your answers to our recent Glennbeck.com poll cut through the establishment’s haze, revealing a profound skepticism of their narrative.

The results are undeniable: 98% of you believe taxpayer-funded NGOs are bankrolling these riots, a bold rejection of the claim that these are grassroots protests. Meanwhile, 99% dismiss the mainstream media’s coverage as woefully inadequate—can the official story survive such resounding doubt? And 99% of you view the involvement of socialist and Islamist groups as a growing threat to national security, signaling alarm at what Glenn calls a coordinated “Color Revolution” lurking beneath the surface.

You also stand firmly with decisive action: 99% support President Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to quell the chaos. These numbers defy the elite’s tired excuses and reflect a demand for truth and accountability. Are your tax dollars being weaponized to destabilize America? You’ve answered with conviction.

Your voice sends a powerful message to those who dismiss the unrest as mere “protests.” You spoke, and Glenn listened. Keep shaping the conversation at Glennbeck.com.

Want to make your voice heard? Check out more polls HERE.

EXPOSED: Your tax dollars FUND Marxist riots in LA

Anadolu / Contributor | Getty Images

Protesters wore Che shirts, waved foreign flags, and chanted Marxist slogans — but corporate media still peddles the ‘spontaneous outrage’ narrative.

I sat in front of the television this weekend, watching the glittering spectacle of corporate media do what it does best: tell me not to believe my lying eyes.

According to the polished news anchors, what I was witnessing in Los Angeles was “mostly peaceful protests.” They said it with all the earnest gravitas of someone reading a bedtime story, while behind them the streets looked like a deleted scene from “Mad Max.” Federal agents dodged concrete slabs as if it were an Olympic sport. A man in a Che Guevara crop top tried to set a police car on fire. Dumpster fires lit the night sky like some sort of postapocalyptic luau.

If you suggest that violent criminals should be deported or imprisoned, you’re painted as the extremist.

But sure, it was peaceful. Tear gas clouds and Molotov cocktails are apparently the incense and candles of this new civic religion.

The media expects us to play along — to nod solemnly while cities burn and to call it “activism.”

Let’s call this what it is: delusion.

Another ‘peaceful’ riot

If the Titanic “mostly floated” and the Hindenburg “mostly flew,” then yes, the latest L.A. riots are “mostly peaceful.” But history tends to care about those tiny details at the end — like icebergs and explosions.

The coverage was full of phrases like “spontaneous,” “grassroots,” and “organic,” as if these protests materialized from thin air. But many of the signs and banners looked like they’d been run off at ComradesKinkos.com — crisp print jobs with slogans promoting socialism, communism, and various anti-American regimes. Palestinian flags waved beside banners from Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba, and El Salvador. It was like someone looted a United Nations souvenir shop and turned it into a revolution starter pack.

And guess who funded it? You did.

According to at least one report, much of this so-called spontaneous rage fest was paid for with your tax dollars. Tens of millions of dollars from the Biden administration ensured your paycheck funded Trotsky cosplayers chucking firebombs at local coffee shops.

The same aging radicals from the 1970s — now armed with tenure, pensions, and book deals — are cheering from the sidelines, waxing poetic about how burning a squad car is “liberation.” These are the same folks who once wore tie-dye and flew to help guerrilla fighters and now applaud chaos under the banner of “progress.”

This is not progress. It is not protest. It’s certainly not justice or peace.

It’s an attempt to dismantle the American system — and if you dare say that out loud, you’re labeled a bigot, a fascist, or, worst of all, someone who notices reality.

And what sparked this taxpayer-funded riot? Enforcement against illegal immigrants — many of whom, according to official arrest records, are repeat violent offenders. These are not the “dreamers” or the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. These are criminals with long, violent rap sheets — allowed to remain free by a broken system that prioritizes ideology over public safety.

Photo by Kyle Grillot/Bloomberg | Getty Images

This is what people are rioting over — not the mistreatment of the innocent, but the arrest of the guilty. And in California, that’s apparently a cause for outrage.

The average American, according to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, is supposed to worry they’ll be next. But unless you’re in the habit of assaulting people, smuggling, or firing guns into people’s homes, you probably don’t have much to fear.

Still, if you suggest that violent criminals should be deported or imprisoned, you’re painted as the extremist.

The left has lost it

This is what happens when a culture loses its grip on reality. We begin to call arson “art,” lawlessness “liberation,” and criminals “community members.” We burn the good and excuse the evil — all while the media insists it’s just “vibes.”

But it’s not just vibes. It’s violence, paid for by you, endorsed by your elected officials, and whitewashed by newsrooms with more concern for hair and lighting than for truth.

This isn’t activism. This is anarchism. And Democratic politicians are fueling the flame.