Tag: Islamists

On Thursday, I listened to a few minutes of NPR because I couldn’t find any other radio stations that weren’t worse. The subject was the insane Aussie fascist who perpetrated mass murder at mosques in New Zealand. The segment was an interview with a woman who continually referred to “mosque attacks.” At first I heard her saying “mass attacks.”

But she was implying “mosque attacks” happen in Western democracies quite frequently. “They mean this. They mean that. They demonstrate societal Islamophobia.”

So when I stumbled across an article from the Associated Press:
A look at attacks on houses of worship over last decade

… it seemed like “mosque attacks” are a thing, but in majority Muslim countries. So, I started comparing the number of Islamist attacks on mosques to the attacks on houses of worship overall. Sixteen of the incidents AP listed were attacks on mosques by organized Islamist groups. ISIS, Al-shabaab, etc.. Four were attacks on other religions by organized Islamists. Two were attacks on mosques by white supremacist individuals. One was an attack on a Synagogue by a white supremacist individual. One was an attack on a Synagogue by Islamists. One was an attack on a black church by a white supremacist. One was an attack on a Baptist church by a deranged atheist. One was an attack on a Sikh temple by a white supremacist.

Where the AP incident descriptions below are not completely clear about who committed the crimes, I have linked to complete stories that support my classification.

Green are attacks on any religion that took place in a Western democracy.

77% of all these attacks were committed by Islamists.  70% of those were attacks on other Muslims.  They all were committed in the name of Islamic terrorist organizations.

Attacker-Attacked	Incident
Islam-Christian	Oct. 31, 2010: Al-Qaida in Iraq militants attack Our Lady of Salvation Catholic Church in Baghdad during Sunday night mass, killing 58 people in the deadliest assault targeting Christians since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion there. Al-Qaida in Iraq later became the Islamic State group.
Islam-Islam	Dec. 15, 2010: Two suicide bombers from the Sunni extremist group Jundallah blow themselves up near a mosque in southeastern Iran, including six Revolutionary Guard commanders.
Islam-Islam	July 16, 2010: Jundallah group kills 27 and injures 270 after it carries out a double suicide bombing against another Shiite mosque in southeastern Iran.
Islam-Christian	Oct. 31, 2010: Al-Qaida in Iraq militants attack Our Lady of Salvation Catholic Church in Baghdad during Sunday night mass, killing 58 people in the deadliest assault targeting Christians since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion there. Al-Qaida in Iraq later became the Islamic State group.
Islam-Islam	Dec. 15, 2010: Two suicide bombers from the Sunni extremist group Jundallah blow themselves up near a mosque in southeastern Iran, including six Revolutionary Guard commanders.
White Supremacist-Sikh	Aug. 5, 2012: Six members of the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin, in Oak Creek, are fatally shot by a white supremacist, Wade Michael Page. Page was shot by a responding officer and later killed himself.
Islam-Judaism	Nov. 18, 2014: Two Palestinians using axes, knives and a gun kill four Jewish worshippers and an Israeli police officer in an attack on a Jerusalem synagogue.
Islam-Islam	Jan. 30, 2015: Suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque in the Pakistani town of Shikarpur kills 71. Jundullah claims responsibility.
Islam-Islam	March 20, 2015: Islamic State suicide bombers attack a pair of mosques in Yemen’s capital, unleashing monstrous blasts that ripped through worshippers and killed 137 people.
White Supremacist-Black Christians	June 17, 2015: Nine black worshippers including a pastor are killed by Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old white supremacist, after he prayed with them in Charleston, South Carolina. Roof was convicted of federal hate-crime and obstruction-of-religion charges and sentenced to death.
Islam-Islam	Sept. 24, 2015: A suicide bomber strikes a mosque in Yemen’s rebel-held capital, killing 25 worshippers during prayers for the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.
Islam-Islam	Nov. 12, 2016: Suicide bomber from Islamic State group kills over 50 at the shrine of Shah Noorani, in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province.
Islam-Christian	Dec. 11, 2016: Suicide bomber strikes inside a Cairo chapel adjacent to St. Mark’s Cathedral, seat of Egypt’s ancient Coptic Orthodox Church. The Islamic State group claimed the attack, which killed at least 25 people.
White Supremacist-Islam	Jan. 29, 2017: A gunman killed six men during evening prayers at the Islamic Cultural Centre in Quebec City. Alexandre Bissonnette pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and attempted murder charges and was sentenced to serve 40 years in prison before being eligible for parole.
Islam-Islam	Feb. 16, 2017: Suicide bomber detonates his explosives vest among the devotees at the shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in Pakistan’s Sindh province, killing 98.
Islam-Islam	April 9, 2017: Twin suicide bombings rock churches in the Egyptian coastal city of Alexandria and Tanta, killing at least 45 people. The attack was claimed by the Islamic State group.
Islam-Islam	June 15, 2017: A suicide bomber kills four people at a Shiite mosque in Afghanistan’s capital city of Kabul. Among the dead is a leader of Afghanistan’s ethnic Hazaras, who are mostly Shiite Muslims.
Islam-Islam	Aug. 1, 2017: A suicide bomber storms into the largest Shiite mosque in Afghanistan’s western Herat province, opening fire on worshippers before blowing himself up, killing at least 90 people. Hundreds more were wounded in the attack, which happened during evening prayers.
Islam-Islam	Aug. 25, 2017: Militants storm a packed Shiite mosque in Kabul during Friday prayers. The attack ends with at least 28 worshippers killed and 50 wounded, many of them children. Two of the assailants blow themselves up and another two are shot dead by Afghan security forces.
Islam-Islam	Sept. 29, 2017: A suicide bomber blows himself up outside a Shiite mosque in Kabul, killing five. The attack took place as worshippers were leaving the mosque after Friday prayers.
Islam-Islam	Oct. 20, 2017: The Islamic State group claims a suicide bomber attack, killing 31 and wounding 29 people, at a Shiite mosque in Kabul.
Deranged atheist-Christian	Nov. 5, 2017: Dressed in black tactical-style gear and armed with an assault weapon, 26-year-old Devin Kelley opened fire at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas, killing 26 people and wounding about 20 others.
Islam-Islam	Nov. 24, 2017: Militants kill 311 worshippers in a mosque attack in north Sinai, the deadliest such terrorist attack in Egypt’s modern history.
Islam-Islam	Dec. 17, 2017: Islamic State attack on a church in Pakistani city of Quetta kills 16 people.
Islam-Islam	Aug. 3, 2018: Suicide bombers disguised in burqa robes attack a Shiite mosque in eastern Afghanistan, killing 27 people.
White Supremacist-Judaism	Oct. 27, 2018: A gunman believed to have spewed anti-Semitic slurs and rhetoric on social media entered Tree of Life Congregation synagogue in Pittsburgh and opened fire, killing 11 and wounding six, including four police officers.
Islam-Christian	Jan. 27, 2019: Two suicide attackers detonate two bombs during a Mass in a Roman Catholic cathedral on the largely Muslim island of Jolo in the southern Philippines, killing 23 and wounding about 100 others. Three days later, an attacker hurls a grenade in a mosque in nearby Zamboanga city, killing two religious teachers.
White Supremacist-Islam	March 15, 2019: At least 40 people are killed in an attack at mosques in the New Zealand city of Christchurch.

This is AP’s list, and they acknowledge elsewhere that it is incomplete:

A U.N. report released in November documented 51 attacks on places of worship in Afghanistan since January 2016 that killed more than 270 civilians and wounded hundreds more.

(Update Mar 18: And here’s another one they missed: The 2014 firebombing of Bergisch Synagogue in Wuppertal, Germany, by three Palestinian immigrants. German courts declared this to be anti-Israel, and not to be antisemitic. Sounds like Ilhan Omar.)

It’s highly likely that U.N. list skews to Islam-Islam atrocities, but calculating the increased Islam-Islam attack percentage isn’t the point of this post.

We can condemn the New Zealand attack without blaming it on Western democracies, or Tweets by Chelsea Clinton castigating Ilhan Omar for anti-semitism. One might note there are no listed attacks on mosques in Israel.

For one thing, like most of the group-organized attacks listed above, those 51 did originate from the culture. The white supremacist attacks all appear to have been single individuals, outside the culture. For another thing, all those individuals have been caught and have/will face(d) punishment under Western rules of law. This is not true of the Islamist attacks on Muslims.  Finally, there is no question that the Islamist attacks were all motivated by religion.

If, as the SJWs contend, all cultures are equal, then all cultures should be equally condemned when such atrocities take place. That they are not tells us something about these Western critics of Western values. We find mass murder abhorrent, and an affront to our values, no matter who the victims. Islamists do not.