Syrian rebels just captured the town where ISIS thinks the apocalypse will begin
A group of Syrian rebels backed by Turkey announced Sunday they have successfully wrested the symbolically important town of Dabiq, Syria, from the Islamic State. Militant leader Saif Abu Bakr reported about 2,000 Syrian fighters forced their way into Dabiq with support from the Turkish Army.
The ISIS occupiers put up "minimal" resistance before retreating, Bakr said, though the town still must be cleared of land mines and IEDs before it is safe for civilian occupancy. Located about six miles from the Turkish border, Dabiq is the latest pitstop in efforts to push ISIS away from Turkey and into an ever-smaller patch of territory in Iraq and Syria.
Dabiq, the namesake of ISIS's English language propaganda magazine, is important because some branches of Islam believe it to be the future site of an apocalyptic battle between Muslims and Christians that will kick-start the end of the world. For now, the apocalypse will have to be postponed.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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