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Canada should be commended for its leadership in recommending that the United Nations Security Council investigate ISIS’s crimes.

Having shown such leadership, Canada should also lead on the question of genocide by ISIS, rather than following a UN commission’s misguided exclusion of Christians from such a designation.

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The idea that some religious groups have been targeted for genocide by ISIS — but Christians have not — is both false, and dangerous.

This is all the more obvious since the recent murder of a priest by ISIS in France.

Based on the overwhelming evidence, Christians have been included in genocide designations by the European Parliament, the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Congress, parliaments and officials of a number of European governments, as well as the Iraqi cabinet and the Kurdish Regional Government.

The evidence offered to exclude Christians relies on an ISIS propaganda narrative that Christians are given the choice of paying “jizya” — a “tax” historically offered in exchange for protection by a Muslim ruler — rather than facing the “convert or die” ultimatum confronting non-Christian groups like Yazidis.