There is a Middle Eastern saying, “After Saturday, Sunday.” It describes the order of the Jewish and Christian Sabbaths, but recently means that after the persecution of Jews, the persecution of Christians will follow and this is as inevitable as Sunday following Saturday.
Easter Sunday in Colombo, Sri-Lanka, the peaceful quiet of Easter morning was violently disrupted by eight terror bombings that killed more than 200 Christian Worshipers, Western Tourists and the inevitable bystanders. Note, I did not say “innocent bystanders” as all these murder victims were innocent. The number of injured is still being determined.
Sri Lankan authorities have indicated preliminarily that the perpetrators are Islamist terrorists, although at this point, there have been no claims of responsibility. What is clear is that this act of terror was aimed at Christians and Western tourists.
Sri Lankans endured a civil war from 1948, when British rule ended, until 2009. The history of that war is beyond this essay. The war was fought between the Sinhalese Buddhist majority and the Hindu Tamil minority. The war ended after the Tamil army, known as the Tamil Tigers was eliminated. The end of the civil war revived tourism to this beautiful country and its wonderful and friendly people.
Today, about 70% of Sri Lankans are Buddhist, 13% are Hindi, 10 % are Muslim, and 7% are Christian. Although there have been Jews in Sri Lanka historically, there are virtually no Jews living in Sri Lanka at present.
But when it comes to religiously targeted terrorism, Jews and Israel have been the canaries in the coal mine. For those who don’t know, this analogy means that the caged canary in a mine will die if there is poison gas present. That is the warning that the miners immediately need to evacuate. The terrorism that has targeted Jews and Israel has had a couple important results. First, terrorists have improved their tactics and techniques over the years as they have gained experience. At the same time, the world has seen the canary die. Israel and Jewish communities around the world have been “hardened” to dull the impact of terrorism. But the rest of the world has reacted more like another bird–the ostrich.
There have been many terrorist attacks targeting Christians. In recent years, Islamists have attacked the Christian Communities in Egypt, Gaza, the West Bank, Iraq and Syria with devastating impact. Many of those once thriving communities are gone. It must also be mentioned that Christians and churches across Europe also are being attacked, helping speed the secularization of Europe. Surprisingly, this religious genocide has received little international attention and certainly no effective action.
But somehow, the Colombo attacks seem different. The world’s media woke up Easter Sunday morning to the carnage in Colombo and made the world aware.
Colombo must awaken our civilization to more than the ubiquitous “thoughts and prayers” which are always welcome. What is needed is action but not just military and police work. Children must be taught that people of different faiths are still people of faith, and that no one faith is superior or exclusive of others. What is needed is knowledge of what religious leaders teach their followers and if that teaching includes incitement against other religions, the teaching must be stopped. And what is needed is government action to support religious freedom from religion and protection of all religious minorities. These steps must be taken by members of the religion responsible for the attacks–in this and most (but certainly not all) case, moderate mainstream Muslims. Because this is in fact a war against modernity, against civilization as we know it.
There was no “Saturday” in Colombo. There was only a horrific, bloody and terrifying Sunday. Easter Sunday. We need to act now because after “Sunday” there is nothing, other than the end of civilization as we know it.