ISIS is evil incarnate, an organization whose abuses are multiplying by the day.  Many now know of the reports of ISIS selling young women as slaves, the mass annihilation of children, capturing and then raping women, the public rape and then beheading of Christian women, crucifixions and beatings, homosexuals being thrown off buildings; videos of Christians in orange jumpsuits being slaughtered on a beach, and a horrific video of a captured Jordanian pilot burning to death after ISIS starved him and smothered him with gas.

Just when we thought ISIS couldn’t stoop any lower, now we uncover a new layer of horror.  There are trustworthy reports that ISIS is killing disabled children, especially those with Down syndrome or congenital deformities. 

The report comes from Mosul Eye, which is a well-respected historical undercover blog and Facebook page reporting on the ISIS takeover of Mosul, a city in Iraq.  Despite threats by ISIS that they would invent a new way to kill him, this anonymous reporter has bravely persevered with the express goal of informing the West about the horrors of ISIS rule and how it has changed everything -- leaving a vastly different culture where even orphan children are being radicalized.

Now, 38 children are known to have been murdered after a special fatwa -- or religious decree -- was issued against them.  Apparently the decree was to “kill newborn babies with Down Syndrome and congenital deformities and disabled children.”  Infants from one week to three months old faced lethal injection or suffocation.  Can you imagine them choking a baby to death? We must face the truth of all this.

Many of the children with Down syndrome who were killed were born to foreign fighters who married Iraqi, Syrian, or Asian women.  It is unclear whether the targeting also has a racial component aimed against these foreigners or against inter-racialism.  Any motive for such horror is unjustifiable. This is nothing less than infanticide.

This is a new slaughter of innocent babies, echoing the atrocities of years past.  Herod killed so many infants, seeking to crush the Christ child (Matthew 2:16-18).  Hitler slaughtered the disabled as well; his own “fatwa” was known as T4, in which Hitler expanded his slaughter of the disabled.  This program had already been piloted amongst the young -- parents were encouraged to turn in their disabled children to hospitals which killed them; midwives were expected to report newborns with signs of disability.  At least 5,000 under age 16 were killed in this child euthanasia movement.  Naturally, we must be cautious in drawing contrasts from the Holocaust, but many are already beginning to draw this ISIS-Hitler parallel.

We must then ask ourselves, if we are caught in another Hitleresque era of deep evil and the violation of the most basic human rights, what role to do we as Americans now have to play in this international, and even spiritual, battle?  Prayer must certainly be vital -- prayer for miraculous conversion of enemies, for just judgment on evil organizations and their unrepentant accomplices, for mercy on the persecuted victims of Islamic terror, and for strength for our Christian brothers and sisters there. 

Some of us may be called to act.  Brave believers like Corrie Ten Boom and Dietrich Bonhoeffer proudly stood up against Nazi injustice by calling on the church to proclaim the true evil of what was occurring instead of turning a blind eye to it.  Corrie hid Jews in her home to protect them from the Nazis, while Bonhoeffer was the chaplain for an undercover group planning to assassinate Hitler.  At great personal cost, Corrie losing her family and Bonhoeffer his own life, both these heroes clung to faith, prayer, and action against atrocities.

Bonhoeffer famously exhorted others, “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”  Now we must begin to ask ourselves what speaking and acting looks like for us today.  I don’t yet have a full answer to that question, but I know we are called upon to be truth tellers, even in the face of death.

Penny Nance is the President and CEO of Concerned Women for America, the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization. For more information visit concernedwomen.org.