Inside the theocracy

As ISIS rule spreads through northern Iraq and adjacent parts of Syria, local residents are getting a taste of theocracy:

On June 23, the Assyrian International News Agency reported that ISIS terrorists entered the home of a Christian family in Mosul and demanded that they pay the jizya (a tax on non-Muslims). According to AINA, "When the Assyrian family said they did not have the money, three ISIS members raped the mother and daughter in front of the husband and father. The husband and father was so traumatized that he committed suicide.".....Since the fall of Mosul, a litany of evils has replaced the liturgies of the Christians there: a young boy ripped from the arms of his parents as they ran from the ISIS advance and shot before their eyes, girls killed for not wearing the hijab.

I should point out that some of these stories haven't been independently corroborated, but given what we've already seen of ISIS's treatment of Shiite Muslims, they hardly seem surprising.  Islam does mandate tolerance for the existence of "People of the Book" (Christians and Jews), but this tolerance is conditional on their accepting Islamic rule and second-class citizenship including paying the jizyah, and no such tolerance is allotted to other religions or to the non-religious.  Everything ISIS is said to have done so far is in line with what God repeatedly commands the Hebrews to do to various unbelievers in the Old Testament.  What we're seeing here is simply what happens when the adherents of Abrahamic faiths really believe and follow what their sacred texts say.

Not surprisingly, great numbers of people have fled Mosul since ISIS captured it, some heading for nearby smaller towns, though these are not safe either.  The one true safe haven nearby is the self-governing enclave of Iraqi Kurdistan, where 300,000 people have already fled, straining the Kurds' resources and threatening them with a permanent refugee problem on their hard-won soil.  Not all those who have fled are Christians.  No non-Sunni can feel safe under ISIS rule, and many Sunnis do not wish to live under a grim totalitarian theocracy that engages in mass beheadings and worse.  Remember, ISIS was actually expelled from al-Qâ'dah for excessive brutality.

ISIS is also fighting to expand the swath of territory it controls in Syria.  There are over six million non-Sunnis in Syria, including Christians of various kinds, Alawites, Shiites, Druzes, and others.  Where religion is concerned, no matter how bad things are, it is always possible for them to get worse.