ICC Note:
“Christian holidays… are increasingly a time of death and destruction, and a time of terror [in the Islamic world],” the Gatestone Institute reports. On Easter Sunday, about 50 Christians when two bombs were detonated outside a church in northern Nigeria.
By Raymond Ibrahim
4/11/2012 Nigeria (Gatestone Institute) – Last Sunday, many Christians around the world celebrated Easter, taking for granted that they can congregate and worship in peace. Not so in the Islamic world, where top religious officials call for the destruction of churches, Christian holidays celebrated in church are increasingly a time of death and destruction, and a time of terror.
Nigeria, for example, saw some 50 Christians killed "when explosives concealed in two cars went off near a church during Easter Sunday services in the northern Nigerian city of Kaduna….the casualty figure may go up because some injuries were really critical." The church targeted was "the Assemblies of God's Church near the centre of the city with a large Christian population and known as a major cultural and economic centre in Nigeria's north." According to the pastor holding Easter services at the time, "We were in the Holy Communion service and I was exhorting my people and all of a sudden, we heard a loud noise that shattered all our windows and doors, destroyed our fans and some of our equipment in the church."
There is little doubt that the Islamist group Boko Haram ["Western Education is a Sin"] is behind the terror strike. Boko Haram has long been targeting churches—most glaringly, last December 25, when several churches were bombed in the Muslim majority areas of Nigeria, in what was described as "Nigeria's blackest Christmas ever: then, over 40 Christians were slain, "the majority dying on the steps of a Catholic church [in Madalla, near the capital of Abuja] after celebrating Christmas Mass as blood pooled in dust from a massive explosion." As usual, the charred and dismembered remains of Christian worshippers were seen scattered in and around the destroyed church.
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While the mainstream media, analysts, government officials, and so on, try to portray these attacks as products of Nigerian poverty, the fact is, wherever in the world there are significant numbers of Muslims (Nigeria's population is half Christian, half Muslim), churches are under siege (see sections dealing with church attacks in the "Muslim Persecution of Christians" reports for February, January, December, November, October, September, August, and July).
Some of the more spectacular ones include the Baghdad church attack where 58 Christians were killed; similarly, the New Year's Eve church bombing in Egypt that saw over 20 Christians killed (when several more churches were bombed and attacked, and thousands of Egyptian Christians demonstrated, they were slaughtered by their own military); earlier, in 2010, eight Egyptian Christians were shot dead by drive-by Muslims as they were leaving church on Christmas Eve.
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