November 6, 2024
An Increasingly Dangerous Stand-off between Civilizations
Pictured: The wreckage of St. Sebastian's Church in Negombo, Sri Lanka, on 21 April 2019, following a bomb attack earlier that day.
Pictured: The wreckage of St. Sebastian’s Church in Negombo, Sri Lanka, on 21 April 2019, following a bomb attack earlier that day.

The number of deaths is not always a guide to the impact of a tragedy. One of the most recent tragedies had a high, but far from record-making, toll of fatalities. First, and as a basis for comparison, it is worth noting that the November 2015 Islamic State attacks in Paris slaughtered 90 people in the Bataclan Theatre and more elsewhere in the city, for a total of 130 deaths. The Islamist truck attack on a single stretch of road in Nice on 14 July 2016 took no fewer than 86 lives. On Easter Sunday, 21 April 2019, around 253 innocent people, including many children, were slaughtered during radical Muslim attacks on churches and three hotels in Sri Lanka, the largest death toll since the nearly 3,000 on September 11, 2001.

These all took their toll and will not soon be forgotten. Another attack recently took place that may have left a lasting impression, already changing how people think and act about our responses to these attacks and the people who perpetrate them, as we move more forcefully into a state of concerns on both sides of an increasingly dangerous stand-off between civilizations.

Most recently, 50 people were killed and another 50 were injured during an armed attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand on March 15, 2019.

The alleged killer was a 28-year-old Australian man, apparently a far-right activist named Brenton Harrison Tarrant. He was arrested while driving away from the second attack, possibly headed for another Islamic centre. Police Commissioner Mike Bush said that authorities “absolutely” believe they stopped the suspect “on the way to a further attack.” One target may have been the Ashburton Mosque, about an hour’s drive away. According to New Zealand’s News Hub:

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