Wednesday, April 24, 2019

MURDERING MUSLIMS - BOMBINGS 'ACTS OF VIOLENCE AGAINST ALL FAITHS' EU FOREIGN MINISTER DECLARES


Deadly Islamist Church Bombings ‘Acts of Violence Against All Faiths’ — EU Foreign Minister



BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - APRIL 10: EU's High representative for foreign affairs and security policy Federica Mogherini arrives ahead of a European Council meeting on Brexit at The Europa Building at The European Parliament on April 10, 2019 in Brussels, Belgium.Theresa May formally presents her case to the European Union for …
Leon Neal/Getty Images
VIRGINIA HALE
447
2:34

Deadly Easter suicide bombings targeting Christians in Sri Lanka were an attack on people of “all faiths”, according to EU Foreign Affairs chief Federica Mogherini.

The EU Commission’s vice-president and ‘High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy’ said the suspected Islamist terror blasts, for which ISIS claimed responsibility, were an attack on multi-religious societies, “freedom of religion and the choice to worship”.
“Easter Sunday is a special moment for Christians around the world,” Mogherini acknowledged in a statement, before declaring that the attacks — in which suicide bombers targeted hotels, a housing complex and three Roman Catholic churches — constituted “acts of violence against all beliefs and denominations”.
The government of Sri Lanka on Monday identified the local Islamist terror group, National Thowheed Jamath (NTJ), as behind the blasts, which killed more than 320 people and injured around 500 more, while ISIS has claimed responsibility.
Authorities in the majority-Buddhist island nation, where Muslim and Christian minorities each constitute only a modest share of the population — at 10 per cent and eight per cent, respectively —  have reportedly detained 40 suspects in connection to the attack, including a Syrian national.


Left-wingers in the U.S. have been accused of hypocrisy after neglecting to identify victims as Christian or perpetrators as Islamist in their responses to the attack on Sri Lanka. Breitbart News reported how leading Democratic figures including the party’s former presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama tweeted Sunday to denounce terror attacks on people they described as “Easter worshippers” rather than Christians.
Contrasting sharply to the responses of globalist political leaders from across the West — who, while quick to decry supposed anti-Islamic hatred from their own populations, are reluctant to mention an epidemic of anti-Christian attacks sweeping the globe — was the reaction of Vatican Cardinal Robert Sarah, who denounced the “barbaric Islamist violence” behind the bombings in Sri Lanka.
“As we celebrate the resurrection of the son of God, the terrible attacks in Sri Lanka once again show how the followers of Christ are all over the world the victims of wild and foolish deeds,” wrote the conservative African prelate, calling on his followers to pray for people affected by the blasts.



FaithLondon / EuropeNational Securityanti-Christian attacksanti-Christian violenceEaster massacreEuropean CommissionFederica MogheriniIslamic terrorSri LankaSri Lanka attacksSri Lanka Easter attacks

Sri Lanka Identifies Radical Imam Suspected of Masterminding Easter Bombings


Moulvi Zahran Hashim or Moulavi Zahran Hashim was a radical islamist Imam and preacher who was identified as the suicide bomber at the Shangri-La Hotel, Colombo during the 2019 Sri Lanka Easter Bombings.
Wikimedia
JOHN HAYWARD
 1516
4:07

No individual or group has made a formal claim of responsibility as of Monday morning for the horrific Easter Sunday bombings in Sri Lanka, which killed almost 300 people at the latest count, but the Sri Lankan government considers a radical Islamist group called National Towheeth Jamath (NTJ) and its leader, Imam Moulvi Zahran Hashim, the prime suspects.

Sri Lankan Health Minister Rajitha Senaratne described the group on Monday as an “international network without which these attacks could not have succeeded.”
“There had been several warnings from foreign intelligence agencies about the impending attacks. Persons named in intelligence reports are among those arrested. Some named in the reports had died during attacks,” Senaratne said.
“We don’t see how a small organization can do all of this. We are now investigating international support for the group and their other links,” he said.
Senaratne said the Sri Lankan government received “several warnings from foreign intelligence agencies about the impending attacks.” At least one of these warnings was a document that explicitly named the NTJ and said they planned to attack churches.
Other officials were equally insistent the bombers had assistance from foreign terrorist organizations. Sri Lankan authorities have made 24 arrests so far in the course of investigating the attacks.
NTJ, whose name is sometimes rendered in English as “National Thowheed Jamath,” is a previously obscure extremist group that split off from an Islamist organization called Sri Lanka Towheeth Jamath (SLTJ) several years ago.
The precise timing and degree of the separation is somewhat murky, in part because NTJ keeps a surprisingly low profile for an extremist organization in the Information Age. The BBC noted on Monday that NTJ only updates its Facebook page once every few weeks, has not issued a tweet since March 2018, and appears to have taken its website offline.
Indian Express reported the Sri Lanka Towheeth Jamath is taking pains to distance itself from NTJ, condemning the Easter Sunday attacks and calling for “the highest punishment to the perpetrators.” The SLTJ organized a blood drive for victims of the attacks on Sunday and used its Facebook page to offer further assistance.
Asia Times reported some infighting between Sri Lankan officials due to allegations that “the prime minister and Cabinet were not informed about an intelligence warning from Indian officials of possible attacks because of the bitter rift between the PM and the President, as the latter oversees national security.”
Asia Times quoted Indian security sources speculating that “rogue elements within the Pakistani intelligence [service]” might have been involved in the bombing plot, and that some Sri Lankan and Maldivian extremists have “trained in Afghanistan along with the IS-Khorasan Province, an affiliate of the main Syria-based Islamic State.”
One India reported on Sunday that several dozen Muslims from upper-class Sri Lankan families are known to have joined the Islamic State and returned from Syria after the collapse of the “caliphate.” At least one Sri Lankan ISIS recruit has been accused of plotting a terrorist attack in Australia. The police believe ISIS has attempted to smuggle explosives into Sri Lanka.
The warning document police issued this month named Moulvi Zahran Hashim as the spiritual leader of the NTJ. The Jerusalem Post on Monday described his “history of racism and Islamic supremacy”:
In July 2017, for example, Sri Lanka press reported that the organization’s leaders were being prosecuted for making derogatory remarks in a video against Buddha and hurting the sentiments of the Sinhala-Buddhist community in the country.
Hashim has likewise posted several YouTube videos during which he preaches comments that could be considered incitement.
“For years, the faithful man spread his incitement without being banned,” he describes on his video. In another one, he says: “What can Sri Lankan Muslims do for Dr. Zakir Naik?” Naik is the president of the Islamic Research Foundation in India and is considered to preach incitement and support terrorism.
According to the Jerusalem Post, journalists on the left have “pushed back against the reports, accusing the press of being ‘Islamophobic’ for reporting his name.”

Hungary Pledges Funds to Aid Christians After Sri Lanka Bombings



Sri Lankan security personnel walk past debris next to a dead body slumped over a bench following an explosion in St Sebastian's Church in Negombo, north of the capital Colombo, on April 21, 2019. - A series of eight devastating bomb blasts ripped through high-end hotels and churches holding Easter …
STR/AFP/Getty
THOMAS D. WILLIAMS, PH.D.
 46
2:53

Hungary is making an immediate donation of 30,000 euros to assist survivors and orphans of the Sri Lanka Easter massacre and is discussing an additional larger gift.

“The Hungarian government is offering nine million Hungarian forints in emergency aid to the severely injured survivors and the orphaned children of the Easter Sunday attacks in Sri Lanka,” the State Secretary for the Aid of Persecuted Christians and the “Hungary Helps” program announced Monday evening.
The secretary, Azbej Tristan, said that Hungary will examine the possibility of further, larger-scale assistance. After the terrorist attacks resulting in over 300 deaths, the first task is to provide victims with compassion, he said.
Mr. Tristan also criticized efforts to silence the reality that “this was an anti-Christian and anti-Western attack.”
In the United States, liberals like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have been called out on social media and elsewhere for avoiding the term “Christians” when speaking of the target of the attacks, preferring to refer to them as “Easter worshipers.”
In his statement Monday, Mr. Tristan said that Christianity is currently the most persecuted religion in the world and yet they receive little attention from “major international organizations and Western governments.”
In 2016, Hungary established its Deputy State Secretariat for the Aid of Persecuted Christians, making it the only nation in the world with a department of this nature. The secretariat has sent aid to rebuild homes, churches, and schools for persecuted Christians in the Middle East, as well as dozens of scholarships to Christian students in Africa and the Middle East who lost everything to militant Islamic terror groups.
Last December, Hungary partnered with the United States in an alliance to help Christians in the Middle East “recover from genocide and persecution by the Islamic State.”
The government of Hungary signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) “to increase coordination to help communities in the Middle East recover from genocide and persecution by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).”
The agreement between the two nations follows Hungary’s stated policy of taking assistance “to the troubled spots where it’s needed, instead of bringing the trouble and instability to Europe,” said a statement from the Hungarian government.
Hungary has resisted attempts by the European Union (EU) to impose immigration quotas, saying it prefers to focus its humanitarian assistance in afflicted areas so that people do not feel obliged to emigrate.
Mr. Tristan said Monday that although one cannot speak of Christian persecution in the West, there is an increasingly serious problem with the way that western governments treat Christianity at home.
“In the East churches are bombed and in the West they are locked,” he said.
Follow Thomas D. Williams on Twitter 

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