On a desolate beach in Libya ten years ago, twenty-one men in orange jumpsuits were marched to their deaths by black-clad Muslim executioners. The world watched as ISIS broadcast their final moments against the endless Mediterranean. A militant declared in flawless American English, “People of the cross, followers of the hostile Egyptian Church.” Those words made it clear that their only crime was their faith, and their sentence would be death.
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Visegrad24 These men were not soldiers. They carried no weapons and waged no wars. They were construction workers and laborers who had been kidnapped by the brutal Islamist group. They were young men with dreams for a better life. Among them was Samuel Stephanos Kamel, a 23-year-old electrician from el-Aour, a small village in the city of Minya, Egypt.
Three days before the world saw the video, their families received photographs of the men in orange jumpsuits. At first, the images sparked hope that their loved ones were still alive. But they also signaled that the worst was yet to come. There were no demands and no negotiations. Just an ultimatum that had already been answered. On that beach, there were no dreams left to hold, only the certainty of death and the quiet courage of men who knew to whom they belonged.
When their bodies were found and returned to Egypt, they were canonized as saints. Their icons adorn many church walls, and their courage is told in children’s storybooks.
Yet when the infamous video made its way onto the nightly segments of American and other western news shows, the world did not weep. While some American Christian news outlets displayed clarity, journalists and elected leaders resorted to vague or diluted language that avoided addressing the true reason for their deaths. News outlets danced around the truth of why they were killed. The White House referred to them merely as “Egyptian citizens.” There was a cold, clinical unease in the way their murders were discussed—if they were discussed at all.
These twenty-one men are not just another tragic footnote in the long and bloody history of Middle Eastern Christianity. Their sacrifice is not a passive loss but an active testimony to their unwavering faith. In a world that resists acknowledging their sacrifices as a defense of their faith, the story of these men remains a pointed challenge to our understanding of and commitment to faith.
On Feb. 15, 2015 in Libya, the Islamic State (ISIS) released a video depicting 21 Christians being decapitated. While sitting atop and holding their tied victims’ bodies down, Islamic State members shoved their fingers into the Christians’ eye sockets, craned their heads back, and sliced away at their throats with big knives. Not surprisingly, the video has been scrubbed from the internet, but I saved the still shots so the world would never forget.
Just like what other f’ing muslums did to Daniel Pearl – RIP.
Daniel Pearl was as brave as they come when he faced his end at the hands of the moslame psychopaths.
I used to have the video of his horrific beheading.
There is a movie being made about this horrible atrocity. I’m sure the red green axis will fight it tooth and nail to try and stop it from making the big screen.
Where is it being made?
I’m not sure where it’s being made, but the title is “Son of the 11th hour.” They’re still accepting donations for its production, I believe.
I’ll check it out.
Looks like there already is a film about them: https://www.frontpagemag.com/oscar-shortlisted-film-honors-the-21-christians-martyred-by-isis/
Thank you for keeping their memory alive.
Always. 🥲
Imagine if Christians and Jews did this to a bunch of moosies and filmed it? It’s going to happen and probably soon. The world is sick to death of these monsters.
“Those who don’t live by the sword will most certainly perish by the scimitar!” — Egyptian Imams and Sheikhs
“Christianity is not the creed of Asia and Africa today solely because the seventh century Christians of Asia and Africa had trained themselves not to fight, whereas the Moslems were trained to fight.
Christianity has been saved in Europe, solely because the peoples of Europe have fought. If the peoples of Europe in the seventh and eighth centuries, and on up to and including the seventeenth century, had not possessed a military equality with, and gradually a growing superiority over, the Mohammedans who invaded Europe, Europe would have been at this moment Mohammedan and the Christian religion would have been exterminated!
Wherever the Mohammedans had complete sway, wherever the Christians had been unable to resist them by the sword, and Christianity has ultimately disappeared. From the hammer of Charles Martel to the sword of John III Sobieski, Christianity owed its safety in Europe to the fact that it was able to show that it could and would fight as well as the Mohammedan aggressors.
The Civilization of Europe, America, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand exists today only by virtue of the victories of civilized man over the enemies of civilization; victories through the centuries from Charles Martel in the eighth century and those of John Sobieski in the seventeenth century. During the thousand years that included the careers of the Frankish soldier and the Polish King, the Christians of Asia and Africa proved unable to wage successful war with the Moslem conquerors, and in consequence Christianity has practically vanished from the two continents; and today, nobody can find in them any ‘social values’ whatsoever, in the sense in which we use the words, so far as the sphere of Mohammedan influences are concerned.
There are such ‘social values’ today in Europe, America, Canada, Australia, and NZ only because during those thousand years, the Christians of Europe possessed the warlike power to do what the Christians of Asia and Africa had failed to do — that is, to beat back the Moslem invaders.” — Teddy Roosevelt, former POTUS
I am glad these men have been recognized as saints. “Love for life did not deter them” from shedding their blood for Christ. Thanks for remembering them.
I used to have the actual video, which was truly horrifying. I never forgot them.
These folks were murdered thanks to hitlery cliton.