These Muslims risked everything to save their Christian neighbors in Mosul

In a heartwarming thread shared via Twitter on Monday, journalist and New York Times correspondent Rukmini Callimachi showed the world a new side of Mosul and its people. 

Her thread features images and stories of Muslims who saved their Christian neighbors at a time when the city was still under the so-called Islamic State's (Daesh) rule. 

Callimachi's stories are incredibly powerful and completely different from those we often see in the news.  

Here are a few of them: 

Callimachi begins her thread with the story of a Christian woman who stayed in Mosul during the so-called Islamic state's (IS) rule.  

Speaking to the journalist, the woman described how militants "announced on the mosque speaker that Christians needed to convert, leave, or else pay a jizya, or religious tax." 

She also explained how she was forced to convert to Islam "by reciting the shahada: 'There is no God except God & Mohamed is his messenger.'"

 "Deep inside my heart, I said forgive me God. If I don't do this I will be killed," she told the journalist. 

Even after her forced conversion, the woman continued to practice her Christian faith at home. 

When IS militants later came to "check on her," the woman's Muslim neighbor covered for her by saying: "She prays with us." 

Still traumatized by her experience, the woman chose to remain anonymous, only allowing Callimachi to take a photo of her shoes. 

Hussam Jalil Al-Kahwatchy is another Christian man who Callimachi met with in Mosul. 

The Iraqi war veteran stayed in the city for 2 months after it was captured by IS militants. 

After that period of time, one of his Muslim neighbors got word that the terrorist group was coming for him. 

It was that same neighbor who helped Al-Kahwatchy escape the city. 

He bundled him "into a car at 4 am and drove him past the last ISIS checkpoint to safety." 

Kahwatchy recounted the horrors he witnessed at the terrorist group's checkpoint and told Callimachi how they dispossessed Christians of all their belongings. 

"One of the things that stuck in his mind is the image of an ISIS fighter yanking off the earrings of a Christian child," the journalist wrote. 

Callimachi ended her thread with a powerful tweet, reminding the world that every Muslim who helped a Christian escape the horror unfolding in Mosul had made a sacrifice no one could ever imagine. 

Her tweet explained that any Muslim caught helping out Christians who still lived in the city under the terrorist group's rule, would have been murdered.