Mosul, May 24, 2016

The last words of a Christian girl who was burned alive by ISIS bandits were: “Forgive them!” She whispered them before her death to her mother. The girl received severe burns and lived just a day after the ISIS militants had stormed into her family’s house in the Iraqi city of Mosul and set it on fire, reports Sedmitza.ru.

The story of this twelve-year-old girl is only one of many similar stories shared at a conference to aid persecuted Christians in the Middle East countries which was held in New York. The jihadis burst into her family’s house and said to her mother: “Now you will either beat it or pay for your infidelity, as the Surah Al-Jathiyah demands!” (This is a surah of the Qur’an according to which those who venture to disbelieve the signs of Allah are punishable by death). “I will pay and we will leave. Just give us time to pack our things!” the mother cried out. But the gunmen replied: “You have no time!” Then they poured benzine into the room and set fire to it. The mother and the daughter managed to get out of the raging flames, but the girl suffered severe fourth-degree burns and passed away in the hospital in her mother’s arms with the final words: “Forgive them.”

The human rights activist Jacqueline Isaac who shared this story at the conference said: “There is always a light beam in the black abyss. And as long as we have this light, there is a hope.”