Franklin Graham has joined with several other world leaders in trying to make a point to US Secretary of State John Kerry and the State Department. Graham said, "I join leaders who are urging Secretary of State John Kerry to include Christians in the State Department's classification of genocide in the Middle East. ISIS doesn't want to co-exist with Christians - it wants to eliminate them. This is genocide against Christians, and their lives do matter."
Since Syria's war broke out over four years ago, the US has only taken 34 Christian Syrian refugees into the country. That number is one that leaves many leaders with a feeling of disgust given the fact that it accounts for only about 2 percent of the 2100 total Syrian refugees accepted.
Other Christian leaders who have spoken out about the persecution of Syrian Christians include the Archbishop of Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl and Reverend Samuel Rodriguez of the National Hispanic Leadership Conference.
Director of the center for religious freedom at the Hudson Institute Nina Shea has said, "The Christians and the Yazidis are more like the Jews in Nazi Germany. They are being deliberately targeted for eradication by ISIS."
Obama and the State Department have been willing to consider acknowledging that Yazidis, an ancient ethnic-religious group in the Middle East, are experiencing genocide at the hands of ISIS, but they have not been willing to acknowledge that this is true among Syrian Christians.
There has also been a move among the EU to persuade members to recognize that ISIS is committing genocide against the Christians in Syria and other minorities, and to take action.
Lars Adaktusson of the Christian Democrats party in Sweden has noted that in the past year and a half, Christinas in Mosul, Iraq have been forced to flee form their homes. Their homes have been clearly maked with an "N" intended to represent their connection with "Jesus of Nazaraeth."
He added that, "Just like their fellow Christians in Syria, the inhabitants of Mosul fled from the Islamic State's brutal and deadly rampage. When faced with the demand from the terrorists murder patrol to choose between a high penalty tax, converting to Islam or a beheading, an uprooting and dramatic escape was the only way out.
With this, Mosul's churches were emptied, there was no more church services, and for the first time in 1,700 years, the church bells silenced. The people fleeing left their homes, their possessions and their Christian traditions, but also an invaluable cultural heritage."
There have been over 160 Republicans and Democrats in Washington who have signed on to legislation that declares ISIS's violence against Yazidis, Christians and other ethnic and religious minorities to be "war crimes," "crimes against humanity" and "genocide."
