ISIS Support Grows

One would think when you read the ISIS stories about raping women, beheading babies, and butchering people in the most heinous of ways...that most people on planet earth would recoil in disgust and ask, "How could anyone do that?"

But of course, you would be dead wrong.  LOTS OF PEOPLE from all over the world are answering Satan's most audible call, "Come!  Take your vengeance on The West!  Come!  Kill all who refuse Allah!  Come!  Rape and sadistically torture any women we capture!  Come!  Victory will be ours!  Release yourselves from your miserable, impoverished, hopeless lives and be part of Allah's victory!  Come!!"

The human heart is wicked...to the core.  Who can know it?

Satan is nasty.  Who can even comprehend what he is capable of in his fight to the death (Satan's pending death) with his Creator?

Today we go to the Wall Street Journal to get a sample of what is going on as ISIS popularity spreads.

TRIPOLI, Lebanon— Sheik Nabil Rahim is jolted by what he hears nowadays from angry teenagers in the poor neighborhoods of this city, the country’s second-largest and the hub of its Sunni Muslim community.

“They say we want Islamic State, the Islamic State is coming—but they have never actually spoken with someone from Islamic State,” said Mr. Rahim, an influential Salafi preacher who himself was imprisoned for years on terrorism charges.

Support for other, less radical, Islamist movements has withered, he added, “because they don’t have all those great victories.”

In Tripoli’s Bab-el-Tabbaneh neighborhood, where an Islamist militia already holds sway and where Lebanese army checkpoints come under gunfire or grenade attack almost nightly, support for the Sunni radicals of Islamic State is clear. Giant murals of the militant group’s black-and-white flags are painted on the sides of buildings off the main thoroughfare.

“Something scary has happened in Syria and Iraq, and now something strange has come to Tripoli,” said shopkeeper Sam Omar, whose wife’s cousin—a soldier—was killed in one of the recent Tripoli attacks.

Separated from Lebanon by strongholds of the Syrian regime, Islamic State isn’t about to take over Tripoli anytime soon.

But it is posing an insidious threat from within. Among Lebanon’s Sunni community—27% of the population, according to the Central Intelligence Agency—the violent movement is finding fertile ground in the same kind of resentment and alienation that propelled its meteoric rise in Syria and Iraq.

Lebanese security officials say Mr. Mawlawi’s militia, initially little more than a neighborhood gang, is now connected to Islamic State-linked militants in Arsal.

Mr. Mawlawi couldn’t be reached for comment. As recently as September, he denied being part of Islamic State on Lebanese TV.

Bab-el-Tabbaneh residents say recruits are offered as much as $1,500 a month to join—a lucrative prospect in the ramshackle area.

“While the number of armed men here is small, poverty creates an environment in which they can thrive,” said Toufic Dabbousi, head of the Chamber of Commerce of Tripoli and North Lebanon. “None of the Lebanese governments has had any faith in the city, or did much to develop it.”

Islamic State—landlocked so far—seeks access to Tripoli because seizing the port city would give it a much-needed outlet to the sea, said Brig. Gen. Ali Kanso of the Lebanese army. That won’t happen, he assured, because Islamic State—known here by its Arabic acronym Daesh—lacks popular appeal among the Lebanese.

“The ideas of Daesh are not accepted by the people in Tripoli,” Gen. Kanso said. “Our people are sophisticated and educated. Who can approve of decapitations and selling women to slavery in the 21st century?”

But all that support depends on the extent to which the army—and the Lebanese state in general—manages to avoid being sucked into the deepening vortex of the Syrian war. If regional violence escalates, sectarian identity here—just as in Syria or Iraq—may well trump for many their apprehensions about Islamic State’s brutality.

“Though people here are unhappy, most of them are not going to side with Daesh against the army,” said Mr. Rahman, the Islamist preacher. “But if Hezbollah comes here, they will definitely side with Daesh against Hezbollah.”

Here;  http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB20230691462901074025204580218500270910496?mod=rss_Page_One&mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB20230691462901074025204580218500270910496.html%3Fmod%3Drss_Page_One

Please remember people that Sunni Muslims and Shi'ite Muslims have been at each other's throats since Muhammad died 1500 years ago.  ISIS is made up of Sunni Muslims.  If ISIS tries to take Tripoli, Lebanon most Sunnis there MAY resist them....but, as the article says, if Hezbollah (Shi'ite Muslims) come to Tripoli, then the Sunnis would have to join ISIS.

Some in America might be saying, "Cool!  Let the Sunnis butcher the Shi'ites and vice-versa!  Maybe they will kill each other until all those Muslims are gone!"  Of course I understand why they might be saying that....but it's not realistic.  The raping, the torture, the slow beheadings, the sadistic murder of babies...all of these events are releasing demons like genies coming out of a bottle!  Pandora's box is being opened!

Can we civilized people of planet earth really just sit in our nice homes, driving our nice cars, shopping in our nice malls while thousands of women are gang raped and babies are beheaded?  Can we really close our eyes long enough to make ourselves believe that the collapse of civil society in Syria, Lebanon, Tunisia, Libya, Iraq and others, will never affect us here?

The Bible tells us that our battle, as Christians, isn't against flesh and blood but against the spiritual forces of Satan.  We can't fight Satan with guns and bullets.  He can only be held at bay with prayer and the Word of God.

So how many people in The West know their Bibles and are praying to Jesus to intervene in the demonic affairs of Islam?  How many churches are having prayer meetings to pray against Satan and his forces present in Islam?  How many pulpits in churches around the country are telling their congregants that truth about Islam?

I hope there are many, but I am guessing there are few.

Lord, have mercy.