While the terrorism/ hostage situation has been unfolding in a shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya, the media has pretty much been ignoring the massacre of dozens of Christians in Peshawar, Pakistan yesterday. Yes, representatives of the Religion of Peace apparently thought that attacking a church on a Sunday, just as parishioners were leaving, would really advance their cause; Suicide bombers kill 60 Christians outside Pakistan church (The total has since climbed to more than 80 dead.) ~
Two suicide bombers are believed to have entered the All Saints Church after shooting dead police guards, and detonated their explosive vests.
Police said 350 members of the congregation were in the church when the bombers struck and that the death toll is expected to increase because many were being treated in hospital are in a critical condition.
Claiming responsibility for the blasts is a faction of the TTP (Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan), an ally of the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda which has strongholds in the north-west tribal belt, along the Pakistan-Afghan border.
There has been an upsurge in terrorist attacks on religious minorities in Pakistan in the last decade.
Christian churches have suffered grenade and machine gun attacks, while Pakistan’s Christian minorities minister Shahbaz Bhatti was assassinated in 2011 for opposing the country’s discriminatory blasphemy laws. Seven Christians were burned to death in 2009 when a Muslim mob torched 40 houses and a church.
Any one else find it unsettling that President Obama claimed to be a Christian – yet never, ever, bothers to condemn Islamic attacks on those of the same faith?
Related:
Historian: We Are Now Watching ‘The Effective Extinction Of Christianity From Its Birthplace’ ~
Pre-planned destruction of scores of ancient churches, monasteries, schools, orphanages and businesses had gone unreported for days across the West, Nina Shea, Director of the Hudson Institute Religious Freedom Centre in Washington said[…]
Persecution of Copts, who dated their church to Gospel writer St Mark in Alexandria, was at its worst since the fourteenth century, with ‘horrific levels of violence’.
‘It has been the worst persecution in 700 years against the oldest, largest remaining Christian minority in the Middle East.’
