On the morning of April 21, Easter Sunday, nine Muslim terrorists carried out suicide bomb attacks on three crowded churches in Sri Lanka (two Catholic, one Evangelical), as well as three luxury hotels in the capital city of Colombo. An apartment complex and another hotel were struck in the afternoon. Two hundred fifty-three people were killed, and over 500 were injured. Forty-five of the dead were children, including three of the four children of Dutch clothing billionaire Anders Holch Povlsen.
Muslim attacks on churches at Easter are nothing new. In Egypt, on Palm Sunday 2017, Islamic State suicide bombers murdered 45 people in two Coptic churches. In Pakistan, in 2016, a suicide bomber affiliated with the Pakistani Taliban targeted Christians celebrating Easter at a public park, killing 75 people. In Nigeria, on Easter Sunday 2012, a suicide bomber believed to be a member of Boko Haram targeted Christians outside a church, killing 38 people. On April 14 of this year, Palm Sunday, Boko Haram militants killed 17 Christians at a christening in Nigeria.
So the Sri Lanka attack was just another Muslim terror attack—"part and parcel of life in the big city,” according to London mayor Sadiq Kahn—except that an awkward phrase, a new phrase, showed up in the pro-forma tweets of sympathy from the ruling class. Hilary Clinton tweeted about attacks on “tourists and Easter Worshippers” and Barack Obama tweeted about the attacks on “Easter worshippers and travelers.”
Easter worshippers? Do these people worship Easter? No, the people in Churches on Easter Sunday morning are Christians celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ. They were targeted by Muslim terrorists precisely because of their faith. Clinton and Obama (or whoever writes their tweets for them—obviously the same person or PR shop) apparently resorted to such an odd turn of phrase to avoid putting too fine a point on the the fact that Christians were targeted in the attack.
Hillary tweeted that Easter is “a holy weekend for many faiths.” Really? I always thought it was a Christian thing. Barack Obama said the Muslim terror bombings were “an attack on humanity.” Certainly, they were that, but they were mainly an attack on the humanity that gathers to worship in churches on Easter Sunday, otherwise known as Christians.
This odd penchant to avoid naming a religious group that has been attacked doesn’t apply when the shoe is on the other foot. When a lone nut admirer of communist China with a confused, eco-fascist ideology attacked a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, no one had a problem stating clearly that the attack was on Muslims. Not “mosque worshippers,” but Muslims. Notwithstanding that there is no ongoing, worldwide Christian jihad against Muslims, neither Clinton nor Obama had a problem correctly identifying the “Muslim Community” as the target of the Christchurch attack.
Compare and contrast their responses to the Christchurch murders with the Sri Lanka murders:
What our political leaders are hesitant to draw attention to is that Christians are under attack all over the world. Usually by Muslims, but also by other rulers and religions.
In communist North Korea, Christians are fiercely persecuted for the same reason that Christians were persecuted in ancient Rome: because the worship of the one true God conflicts with the apotheosis of the ruler. In ancient Rome, the Caesars were deified; in North Korea it is the Kims who are made into gods. Christians are sometimes killed immediately upon discovery, sometimes sent to concentration camps.
The ill-conceived U.S. intervention in Iraq resulted in the substantial destruction of the Christian community there. The Baathist (secular socialist) regime of Saddam Hussein, which had tolerated the minority Christian population, gave way to a weak, Iran-dominated Shia government which, soon after U.S. troops were withdrawn, gave way in Sunni regions to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). What then happened to the Christian population has been called a genocide. In 2003, there were about 1.5 million Christians in Iraq; today there are fewer than 200,000.
Much the same thing happened in Syria. The rulers of Syria, the Assads, are Alawites, a small Shia-linked sect often persecuted by Sunni Muslims. The Assads tolerated and even protected the Christian minority. But during the civil war and ISIS occupation, they did not control most of the country. Sunni extremist groups including but not limited to ISIS, controlled much of the country, and Christians were wiped out in these areas. Just a few years ago, there were about 1.7 million Christians in Syria; today, there are believed to fewer than 450,000 there.
One result of the 18-year-long American military involvement in Afghanistan is that Christianity is extinct there. The last Christian church was bulldozed in 2010. Our intervention there began because of the 9/11/2001 terror attacks, which were perpetrated by those who believe that sharia law must be implemented throughout the world, but under U.S. occupation Afghanistan adopted a constitution that makes sharia law the basis of all legislation and government. Converting to Christianity is illegal and, if discovered, will result in execution or confinement to a mental hospital.
Christians in Nigeria are under siege by Muslim militants connected with Boko Haram. Since 2009, Boko Haram (“books are forbidden”) has killed tens of thousands of Christians and displaced a population of about 2.3 million, most of whom have fled to neighboring Chad, Niger, and Cameroon. Forty Christians were killed last month in Nigeria in the run up to Easter Sunday.
A wall of silence has surrounded anti-Christian violence and persecution, in part because Westerners are accustomed to thinking of Christendom and Christianity as rich, powerful and dominant. While this is true (for the time being) in most Western countries, it is not a universal constant.
Christians are a hard-pressed, persecuted minority in all Muslim countries, and in much of Africa and Asia. There is a war on Christianity. The political hacks who write the tweets for our ruling class don’t want to admit it, much less draw attention to it by describing slaughtered Christians as “Christians.” In their narrative, Christians are always the persecutors, never the persecuted. But the truth is that there is a war on Christianity, and persecution of Christians grows more fierce with each passing year.