Lebanese Sunni Mohammed Sammak took a harsh position against those “who would hijack Islam and take it hostage. The actions of ISIS are certainly a crime against Christians and Yazidis, but also against Muslims.  They are criminals with whom there can be no dialogue because you can reason with someone who says two and two make five and explain their mistake, but if he says two plus two make seventy it means that he only wants to distort reality”.

According to Sammak, member of the Lebanese Forum for Dialogue who was invited to the Vatican for the Assembly of the Synod of Bishops on the Middle East, “several Middle Eastern governments have violated the rights of their citizens and Arabs, Kurds, Christians, Shiites and Sunnis have been persecuted in several areas. The peoples of these lands have not yet had their Gandhi or Mandela. Globalization is good because it exposes the people of the area to the impact of personalities like these. Even if it will take time, we will eventually achieve mutual acceptance of each other, because “this is the only way of discovering the secret of a reconciled mankind”, he concluded, quoting Pope John Paul II.