Avo Manoukian: ISIS perpetrates its horrors on Assyrian communities

When it comes to religious persecution, ISIS knows no borders. Much of the terror – including execution, kidnapping, rape, and slavery – has fallen on the Christian Assyrian communities of Syria and Iraq as well as on the Yazidis, a people whose unique religion have made them the target of oppression throughout their centuries-old history.

The fingerprints of ISIS also have been found as far north as the Caucasus, specifically during April’s four-day war between the Armenian-populated Karabagh Republic and Azerbaijan. Azeri recruits comprise a number of ISIS, including its high-level commanders, and many reportedly returned to participate in Azerbaijan’s offensive against Karabagh. In true ISIS fashion, the beheading of a captured Yazidi soldier serving in the Armenian military was made public through social media. The bodies of killed Armenian soldiers and civilians showed obvious signs of mutilation.

Certainly, intolerance is similarly not confined to borders, nationality or time, as the horrors of ISIS recall those of the Spanish Inquisition and the Nazis. If history is any indication, ISIS will in time be defeated, but it is, and will remain, as one more reminder that without tolerance there can be no sustained commerce, no exchange of ideas, no civilization.

This story was originally published May 12, 2016 at 12:37 PM with the headline "Avo Manoukian: ISIS perpetrates its horrors on Assyrian communities."