Blow up our shrines, destroy our heritage, incinerate our (once) most precious values, we're saying - just don't hurt us.
"Those who would invite us all to mock our shrines, reject our faith and, if possible, destroy our churches" are "testing the people's ability to protect their holy places", he added.
"These heathens have spread their forces in Egypt, Yemen and the gulf, killing our children, persecuting our scholars, soiling our holy shrines and stealing our wealth," Mr. Zawahari said.
"Nobody is connected to the country like the Yazidi; all our rituals are here, our main shrine is here.
Landmarks include Our Lady of Mercy shrine; the nearby ruins of Caranqui, where the last Inca emperor, Atahuallpa, was supposedly born; and Laguna de Yaguarcocha ("Lake of Blood"), named after a battle between Ibarra's inhabitants and the Incas, in which the slain were thrown into the lake.
And there can be little doubt, though many of us continue to argue the alternatives, that Anzac, with its rhetoric around "spirit", "sacrifice" and the "fallen" (never the dead or the killed) has become Australia's quasi-religion and the memorial our secular shrine.
My father rarely prayed, but when his father was dying, I watched as he knelt before our hidden shrine and asked Buddha to take a few years off his own life and add them to Grandpa's and to transfer all of Grandpa's illnesses onto him.
We shared a teary moment as we set up our little shrine amongst the thousands that were already there.
"We will stay here and fight IS in order to protect our land and our holy shrines".
"All the images of the popular gods and goddesses that we see around us, photographs in our home shrines or prayer halls, online, on calendars, stickers and posters in shops and pasted behind auto-rickshaws, all show them to be light-skinned". Has skin whitening in India gone too far?
