ISIS claims responsibility for bombing two churches this morning (Palm Sunday)

[JasonPratt]

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/09/middleeast/egypt-church-explosion/index.html

Both were Coptic Orthodox churches, the first in Tanto (north of Cairo), the other in Alexandria. Be aware that photos for the Tanto bombing show gore splattered on the floor and a pillar as well as elsewhere. (The bomb there detonated under a pew. The Alexandrian bomb detonated outside.)

[undercovergeek]

http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/09/middleeast/egypt-church-explosion/index.html

Both were Coptic Orthodox churches, the first in Tanto (north of Cairo), the other in Alexandria. Be aware that photos for the Tanto bombing show gore splattered on the floor and a pillar as well as elsewhere. (The bomb there detonated under a pew. The Alexandrian bomb detonated outside.)

I look forward to the day we can drop a badge on the pile of steaming hamburger that was the last local Isis chief who got droned, that says the western allies and Christianity claim responsibility for this - fk you

[JasonPratt]

It isn't always easy to remember, especially at a time like this, but in the long run Christian Pascha is meant for everyone -- including, and in some ways especially, for those ISIS dregs.

Not that I'm going to complain if they get droned to hamburger themselves first.  >:( But I'm supposed to be looking past that, too, to the day when God leads them to reconcile with all their victims and all their enemies. (A point of doctrine that the Coptic Orthodox themselves have historically stressed, since they trace their branch back to Origen Adamantius and his teachers. God knows they've had to put up with a lot over the centuries and millennia.)

[airboy]

Amazingly evil to kill people quietly practicing their religion.

[JasonPratt]

From the Muslim perspective though, the Coptics are treacherous blasphemers who have not only promoted an honored prophet (Issi) to ultimate Godhood (and maybe are too Jewish about doing that, too), but potentially seduce Muslims to hell. I mean, it isn't like ISIS can currently farm the Coptics or other Christians (or Jews) in that area for dhimmi taxes (and other benefits) at the moment, so basically those damned traitors are good for nothing except to help a good (or maybe more relevantly a lapsed) Muslim to die without further risk of him screwing up getting into Paradise later somehow.

I hate that they think that way, but it's also worth considering why we think such things are evil (though I agree it's evil, at least in deluded inspiration, maybe moreso) as a comparison. Otherwise all we're doing is promoting our tribe against their tribe like they're doing to us.  :(

I don't recall if the one outside in Alexandria was a suicider (the other one seems to have planted his bomb), but if he was, maybe he met Saint Athanasius of Alexandria a moment later, to explain that it would be "unseemly to the last degree" for God to let that murderer go to ruin -- and that's why no lesser lord or god (or prophet) shares his victims' pain and the murderer's punishment, with them both (the guilty and the victims of injustice) on that cross.

One way or the other, he'll have the eonian fire to salt him. And that's something any Christian can hope and pray for, even if we don't always agree with each other about what that salting means.  O:-)

[JasonPratt]

When Hamas, of all people, thinks your terrorist attack on Christians has gone too far...  :o :'(

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/05/26/egypt-gunmen-attack-coptic-christians/102183116/

[mirth]

Amazingly evil to kill people quietly practicing their religion.

Utterly despicable.

[JasonPratt]

I guess their theory is that they can go gun down a busload of those Christians out on what amounts to a church group tour, because no one's going to drone and spec-op your ass off the face of the earth for killing them.  >:(

The Coptics (Alexandrians) and their Nestorian (Antiochian) opponents on the other side of the Middle East, have gotten a raw deal for a long, long, long time.  :'( Mostly but not entirely thanks to having been overrun early by the first Muslim generations. (They were somewhat persecuted by central orthodoxy, too, though not remotely to that extent. The Nestorians, aka the Church of the East, got caught by the Mongols, too.)

Just another day in the life of the cradle of misery, tho.