Muslims Celebrating Holy Week
Couple who
married 6 months ago identified as suicide bombers in Indonesian church attack
29 Mar,
2021
Rt.com
Indonesian
police have identified the suspects in Sunday’s church suicide bombing as
a recently married couple with suspected jihadist ties. Families have been
involved in some major terrorist attacks in the region.
The explosion
occurred outside a Roman Catholic church in the city of Makassar after two
people entered the churchyard on a motorbike and were prevented from entering
by security guards. The blast left 20 people injured and killed the attackers.
It happened shortly after a Palm Sunday Mass service was held inside the Sacred
Heart of Jesus Cathedral.
The
perpetrators were identified as a couple living in the same city who got married
six months ago, National Police spokesperson Argo Yuwono revealed on
Monday. Lab tests matched the male's DNA to that of his relatives and confirmed
the female's identity via fingerprints. The police only gave the initials of
the man, L, and his wife, YSF, but local media pinpointed the young couple's
residence and spoke to neighbors.
Police say the
couple are believed to have had links to Jamaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD), an
Indonesian jihadist group linked to Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS). The
group has been responsible for a number of terrorist attacks in Indonesia and
elsewhere in the region.
One of their
highest-profile atrocities was a series of bombings in the city of Surabaya,
the capital of Indonesia's East Java province. Three bombs targeted Catholic
churches, while one was set off by accident at a perpetrator’s residence
and another exploded when police stopped two members of the group for a check.
Three families were behind the spree of violence and included their children
– as young as seven – in the attacks, investigators reported.
Indonesian
police said earlier that one of the suspects in the Sunday bombing had
connections with a militant group that masterminded the 2019 suicide bombing of
the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Jolo,
Philippines. IS claimed responsibility for the attack which, according to law
enforcement, was carried out by an Indonesian couple, with the help of other
accomplices from JAD and Abu Sayyaf, a Filipino jihadist group.
The chief of
the Indonesian National Police, Listyo Sigit Prabowo, said a counterterrorism squad had arrested
19 suspected militants wanted for the Philippine attack, and shot two others,
during a January raid in Makassar. He also reported that five people were
arrested on Sunday and Monday as part of the investigation into Sunday’s
cathedral bombing.
Why Easter Brings Out the Worst in Islam
APRIL 17, 2017 9:27 AM
BY RAYMOND IBRAHIM
Why are some Christians murdered and many more terrorized in the name of Islam
every Easter holiday?
This year’s most notable attack occurred in Egypt, where two Coptic
Christian churches were bombed during Palm Sunday mass, leaving 50 dead and 120
injured.
While this incident received some coverage in Western media, attacks on
churches in Egypt on or around Easter are not uncommon. For instance, this last
April 12, just two days after the Palm Sunday attacks, authorities thwarted
another Islamic terror attack targeting a Coptic monastery in Upper Egypt.
Similarly, on April 12, 2015, Easter Sunday, two explosions targeting two
separate churches took place in Egypt. Although no casualties were reported,
hence no reporting in Western media, large numbers could easily have resulted,
based on precedent (for example, on January 1, 2011, as Egypt’s
Christians ushered in the New Year — another Christian holiday for
Orthodox communities — car bombs went off near the Two Saints Church in
Alexandria, resulting in 23 dead worshippers and dozens critically injured).
Less spectacular but no less telling, after 45 years of waiting, the Christians
of Nag Shenouda, Egypt,
finally got a permit to build a church; local Muslims responded by
rioting and even burning down the temporary tent the Copts had erected to
worship under (a different incident from this similar one). Denied, the
Christians of Nag Shenouda celebrated Easter in the
street, to Muslims jeers and sneers.
While almost anything can provoke Muslims around t world to attack churches,
there is a reason that the animus can reach a fever pitch during Easter: more
than any other Christian holiday, Resurrection Sunday commemorates and
celebrates three central Christian doctrines that Islam manifestly rejects:
that Christ was crucified and died; that he was resurrected; and that by
especial virtue of the latter, he is the Son of God. As Dr. Abdul Rahman
al-Bir, Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood’s mufti said in 2013, Muslims
must not commend Christians during Easter, for that holiday “contradicts
and clashes with Islamic doctrine and contradicts with our doctrines unlike
Christmas.”
From here the carnage makes sense. Thus, on Easter Sunday, 2016, another
Islamic suicide bombing took place near the children rides of a public park in
Pakistan, where Christians were known to be congregated and celebrating. Some
70 people — mostly women and children — were killed and nearly 400
injured. Something similar was in store for Pakistan this year, 2017, as officials
foiled a “major terrorist attack” targeting Christians on Easter
Sunday.
Celebrating Easter is an especially dangerous affair in Muslim-majority regions
of Nigeria: a church was burned down on Easter Sunday, 2014, leaving 150 dead;
another church was bombed on Easter Sunday, 2012, leaving some 50 worshippers
dead; Muslim herdsmen launched a series of raids during Easter week, 2013,
killing at least 80 Christians — mostly children and the elderly;
additionally, over 200 Christian homes were destroyed, eight churches burned,
and 4,500 Christians displaced.
As Islam’s presence continues to grow in Europe, and in accordance with
Islam’s Rule of Numbers, Easter-related attacks are also growing.
According to one report, “the terror cell that struck in Brussels [in
March, 2016, killing 34] was planning to massacre worshippers at Easter church
services across Europe, including Britain.” In Scotland, 2016, a Muslim
man stabbed another Muslim man to death for wishing Christians a Good Friday
and Happy Easter. And if an al-Qaeda terror plot targeting Easter shoppers in
the UK was not thwarted, “it would almost certainly have been
Britain’s worst terrorist attack, with the potential to cause more deaths
than the suicide attacks of July 7, 2005, when 52 people were murdered.”
One can go on and on:
• The day before Good Friday, 2015, Muslim jihadis
raided a Kenyan university and massacred 147; along with the fact that they
tried to distinguish between Muslim and Christian students in order to kill
only the latter, that they taunted those whom they slaughtered by mockingly
saying things such as “This will be a good Easter holiday for us”
placed their animus in the context of the Christian holiday.
• In Iran, Easter Sunday, 2012, saw 12 Christians stand
trial as “apostates”; authorities raided an Easter service in a
house-church in 2014, arresting and hauling off all those in attendance; and in
2015, various churches were banned from celebrating Easter Sunday altogether.
• On Easter Sunday, 2015, the Islamic State destroyed
the Virgin Mary Church in Tel Nasri, an ancient
Christian region in northeast Syria. After Islamic rebels fired rockets at a
Christian neighborhood right before that same Easter, 2015, killing
approximately 40, a woman lamented how “Our
Easter feast has turned to grief.”
• In 2015, Muslims attacked a Catholic village in
Bangladesh as it celebrated Easter; they stabbed its priest, destroyed Bibles,
crosses, holy pictures, musical instruments and homes, and slaughtered goats
and chickens.
• In Turkey, a pastor was beaten by Muslims immediately
following Easter service and threatened with death unless he converted to
Islam.
• According to an AP report from 2013,
“Iraq’s Catholic Christians flocked to churches to celebrate Easter
Sunday, praying, singing and rejoicing in the resurrection of Christ,”
but only “behind high blast walls and tight security cordons.”
Of course, while Resurrection Sunday has the capacity to offend — and
thus bring out the worst in some — Muslims more than any other Christian
holy day, one should be careful not to attribute too much doctrinal nitpicking
to the assailants. After all, Muslims have bombed and burned Christian churches
on other holidays — a Cairo church was bombed leaving 27 dead before last
Christmas — and no holidays at all. (See here for Christmas 2016, here
for Christmas 2015, and here for Christmas 2014 for dozens of anecdotes of
Muslim violence against and slaughter of Christians in the context of
Christmas.)
In short, whatever the holiday, growing numbers of Muslims appear to agree with
the view voiced by one Egyptian cleric that “Christian worship is worse
than murder and bloodshed” — meaning, shedding the blood of
Christians and murdering them is preferable to allowing them to flaunt their
opposition to Muhammad’s teachings, as they naturally do every Sunday in
church. Only more doctrinally attuned Muslims, who are in the minority, save
their attacks for that one day of the year that so flagrantly defies Islam:
Resurrection Sunday.
Suicide Bomber Kills Dozens, Mostly Women, Kids Celebrating Easter in Pakistan
Park
by MUSHTAQ YUSUFZAI
NBC News
3-27-2016
At least 63 people, mostly women and children, were killed and more than 300
others were injured when a suicide bomber blew himself up in a children's park
in Lahore, the capital of Pakistan's Punjab province on Sunday evening,
officials said.
"A large number of people, majority of them
women and children, were present in Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park in Lahore when
the suicide bomber blew himself up. Mostly women and children are killed and
injured in the blast," Said Lahore Police Chief Dr. Haider Ashraf.
The police chief said there was an unusual rush
of the people in the park due to the weekend and Easter. He said a large number
of Christian community celebrating the holy day were
present in the park.
"Most of the dead and injured are women and
children," said Mustansar Feroz,
the police superintendent for the area in which the park is located.
Police officials said they had recovered the
body of the suicide bomber. He seems to be between 25 and 30 years old,
he said.
A splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban,
Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan Jamaatul Ahrar (TTP-JA), headed by Maulvi Omar Khalid Khurasani claimed responsibility for the suicide attack in
Lahore.
The group spokesman, Ehsanullah Ehsan, called
NBC News from an undisclosed location while using an Afghan cell number and
said they carried out the attack.
"Members of the Christian community who
were celebrating Easter today were our prime target," the spokesman said.
Asked if women and children were their target as
most of those killed in the blast included women and children, the Taliban
spokesman said they were not on their list.
"We didn't want to kill women and children.
Our targets were male members of the Christian community," Ehsan said. He
said this was the first of series of attacks they had planned this year
in different parts of the country.
Punjab Health Minister Salman Rafique
said they had declared emergency in all the hospitals of Lahore city to better
handle the injured.
"We are in a state of emergency. All the
hospitals are under emergency. All ambulances had been called to site of the
blast as a large number of people, the majority of them women and children are
injured," the health minister said.
Media footage showed children and women crying
and screaming and rescue officials, police and bystanders carrying injured
people to ambulances and private cars.
Punjab Chief Minister, Shabaz
Sharif later announced a three-day mourning in the province.
In 2014, Pakistan launched an offensive against
Taliban and affiliated jihadist fighters in North Waziristan, seeking to
deprive them of safe havens from which to launch attacks in both Pakistan and
Afghanistan.
Punjab has traditionally been more peaceful than
other parts of Pakistan. Sharif's opponents have accused him of tolerating
militancy in return for peace in his province, a charge he strongly denies.
Last year, a bomb killed a popular Pakistani
provincial minister and at least eight others when it destroyed the minister's
home in Punjab.
Syria Orthodox Easter marred by bishops in captivity
03 MAY 2013
AFP - Syria's Greek Orthodox faithful bore a heavy cross on Friday as they
marked the crucifixion of Christ, their country ravaged by two years of war and
two of their bishops missing after being kidnapped by unknown gunmen.
Good Friday is a day when even the least pious tend to join in its solemn
prayers and processions, but churches in Syria's capital, no longer safe from
car bombings and mortar attacks, are unlikely to be full this year.
That was already the case on Holy Thursday, when streets leading to churches
were blocked off and security forces out in numbers to protect the places of
worship that one resident said were only sparsely visited.
"I won't dare go to church tonight," sighs Shaza,
a mother who lives in the predominantly Christian and Druze neighbourhood
of Jaramana, lamenting that her children will miss the traditional parade by
Scouts, which has been cancelled.
Yussef, a 30-year-old who lives in the Tijara neighbourhood, said the
"violence doesn't stop. At dawn this morning I heard a loud explosion...
It was the jet fuel depot at Damascus airport that was burning."
Yussef was speaking just three days after a bomb
blast in central Damascus killed at least 13 people and four days after Prime
Minister Wael al-Halqi narrowly survived a car bomb
that targeted him.
As the war between the regime of Bashar al-Assad and rebels fighting to oust
the president gains pace, Orthodox in Syria are also praying for the safe
return of Boulos Yazigi, metropolitan bishop of the
northern city of Aleppo and brother of Yuhanna X Yazigi, their patriarch.
Yazigi and Aleppo's Syriac Orthodox bishop,Yuhanna Ibrahim, were
kidnapped by unknown gunmen on April 22 as they were returning home from a trip
to Turkey. Their driver, a Syriac Orthodox deacon, and another passenger were
forced out of the car and the driver murdered, shot in the head.
Their whereabouts and fate is still unknown in a
country where Christian clerics have been murdered, but where kidnapping for
ransom is also rife.
In October, Greek Orthodox Father Fady al-Haddad was seized and killed in
Damascus province as he was trying to negotiate the release of a Christian doctor
who had been kidnapped.
Theft and kidnapping have become rampant in Syria, where criminals have taken
advantage of the security vacuum caused by the fighting.
Patriarch Yuhanna has announced that this Easter he
will not receive traditional greetings from the faithful.
Antoine, a 47-year-old doctor, said the "atmosphere is sad. For the third
year we will be celebrating Easter with sadness, because the country is
bleeding."
"We will pray for their return," he said, adding that Good Friday
prayers would be dedicated to them.
"We believe in the resurrection (of Christ) and also that of Syria."
Gabriel, another Damascene, said that, this year, the "feast will boil
down to just prayers, because blood continues to flow in our country."
Some Syrians have left the country altogether to celebrate Easter, to get away
from the violence and the fear, and Hala has rented
an apartment in Beirut, the capital of neighbouring
Lebanon.
"I came to calm my nerves and to see my son, who works in Qatar," she
told AFP. "Life here is normal, and I try to forget for awhile the nightmare we are living in Syria."
Christians account for about five percent of Syria's multi-confessional
population of Sunni and Shiite Muslims, and of Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite
Islam.
While some may have fled the country and others are contemplating to leave,
student Roula Salam, who lives in the central city of
Homs, is defiant.
"Christians will remain despite all the hardships endured and everything
used to chase us out," she said, pointing out that Christian roots in
Syria date back to the beginning of the faith, 2,000 years ago.
Easter Sunday Ashtabula murder case bound over to grand jury
More disturbing details
come out about that day
By SHELLEY TERRY
Star Beacon
April 10, 2013
ASHTABULA — The make of the gun, knives and the terror felt by Easter
Sunday church-goers the day Reshad Riddle is accused
of killing his father surfaced at his preliminary
hearing Tuesday in Municipal Court.
City Solicitor Michael Franklin called three city police officers to the
witness stand to share their recollections of what occurred after Riddle
allegedly shot Richard Riddle at point blank range outside of Hiawatha Church
of God in Christ. Riddle has been charged with aggravated murder, having weapons
under disability and carrying a concealed weapon.
After 45 minutes of testimony, Judge Albert Camplese
said there was probable cause to send the case over to the Ashtabula County
grand jury.
Riddle, 28, who appeared in shackles, an orange jail jumpsuit and a
bullet-proof vest, sat at the defense table flanked by public defender Joseph Humpolick.
The first witness, Patrolman Jay Janek said when he
arrived on the scene, the elder Riddle was on the ground bleeding profusely,
with an obvious gunshot wound to the head.
“He was deceased,” Janek said.
Police found Reshad Riddle inside the church,
standing at the podium, he said.
“He had the gun in the air,” Janek said.
“He had several knives on him ... we later discovered the Koran on the
podium.”
The second witness, Patrolman Thomas Clemens, said he was called to the church
Easter Sunday for “a subject in the church waving a handgun.”
Upon arrival, he saw several people running from the church and several people
crawling out the narrow windows.
“I pulled two children out of a window,” he said.
As Clemens sat on the witness stand describing the frantic church scene, Riddle
calmly stroked his beard and smiled at a child sitting behind him in the
courtroom. When Clemens was asked to identify the Easter Sunday shooter, Riddle
gave Clemens a little wave.
Clemens testified that once officers transported Riddle to the city jail, they
performed a Gunshot Residue Test on his hands.
“He admitted he used a Smith and Wesson .38 Special,” Clemens said.
“He referred to the Koran and Allah, quoting passages.”
Upon cross-examination, Humpolick pushed for more
details on Riddle’s statements.
Clemens said he wasn’t familiar with the Koran, but remembered Riddle had
said he had “served his purpose.”
A third witness for the prosecution, Detective William Felt, said he was called
into work at about 5 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Easter Sunday. His job was to interview
Riddle at the Justice Center, he said.
“Riddle told me he shot his father with a Smith and Wesson .38 caliber
revolver,” he said. “He said he wasn’t being respected by his
father.”
Felt also said Riddle spoke about religious passages in the Koran.
Humpolick again pressed for details.
“He found solace in his religion after he shot his father,” Felt
said.
With no further witnesses, Franklin entered two exhibits: a copy of the
defendant’s past felony convictions, justifying the charge of having a
weapon while under disability, and the sentencing from the conviction.
Humpolick called no witnesses, but moved to dismiss
the case.
Camplese said the case will be bound over to the grand jury; Riddle will
remain in jail on a $1 million bond.
Family members yelled, “Jesus loves you, Reshad,”
as police led him back to his jail cell.