U.K. Liberal Democrat leader resigns

BRITAIN: Liberal Democrat leader Tim Farron resigned, saying, “I seem to be the subject of suspicion because of what I believe and who my faith is in.” Be sure to watch to the end.

A “working-class evangelical Christian,” Farron was forced out over his (mildly) conservative views on homosexuality and abortion—and Sohrab Amari has an excellent response to the left’s claim to conscience:

“Today’s liberalism has triumphed so spectacularly over the claims of faith and tradition that it has nothing left to conquer but the individual conscience. This is why modern liberals are so unmagnanimous in victory.”

IRAQ: Turns out St. Ephraim Syrian Orthodox Church in Mosul, liberated this week, is one of the sites where ISIS collected Yazidi (and some Christian) girls and women as sex slaves. Journalist Steven Nabil does a walk-through (warning: disturbing footage) with an Iraqi army officer, who describes how the Shariah court arrived to question and separate the females according to age, marital status, and who was having a period.

The battle continues in Mosul’s Old City (see Chapter 16 in my book, “Emptying Mosul”), where about 100,000 residents are trapped and report “boiling mouldy wheat as soup” to survive.

ISIS fighters have sealed off the area around the Great Mosque, where their leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared a global caliphate in June 2014.

Last week’s discovery in Mosul of Christina Abada, the 3-year-old snatched by ISIS from her mother in 2014, highlights the relentless work of Christian advocacy groups, and the perseverance of the persecuted themselves (backstory in Chapter 18 of the book).

IMMIGRATION: My reporting on the latest Trump administration deportation sweep suggests it appears to be targeting Iraqi-American Christians with criminal pasts, complex cases whose deportation would send them to a country some never lived in, where they don’t speak the language, and may become targets for jihadists.

Late yesterday, the ACLU filed a class-action petition in federal court in Michigan—action that likely delays removal at least until a hearing next Wednesday. The petition says claimants face “the very real probability of persecution, torture or death.”

I’m learned more this morning from ICE about removal proceedings, which suggests the detainees will be given the opportunity to go before an immigration judge where the conditions in Iraq will be taken into consideration. More to come.

INDONESIA: For victims of an East Borneo church bombing last November, the pain and suffering go on and on.

UN: U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley laid out the administration’s case for reforming the UN Human Rights Council, saying, “America does not seek to leave the Human Rights Council. We seek to re-establish the council’s legitimacy.”

CHINA: The most attended museum in the world … is not the Louvre.

I’M READING summer stuff, plus City of Stone: The Hidden History of Jerusalem by Meron Benvenisti.

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