Coincidence?
Friday night's car bombing at a Coptic Church in Alexandria, Egypt was no coincidence. In the weeks before the New Year's Day suicide bombing of an Egyptian church, al-Qaida-linked websites carried a how-to manual on "destroying the cross," complete with videos on how to build a bomb and the locations of churches to target — including the one that was attacked.Read the whole thing. Anyone want to try to argue that words don't matter and that incitement doesn't lead to terror?
They may have found a receptive audience in Alexandria, where increasingly radicalized Islamic hard-liners have been holding weekly anti-Christian demonstrations, filled with venomous slogans against the minority community.
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Only two or three days before Saturday's bombing, police arrested several Salafis spreading fliers in Alexandria calling for violence against Christians, a security official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.
According to authorities, the strong belief among investigators is that local extremists who knew the area and the nature of their target were behind the blast. The Egyptian weekly Al-Youm Al-Saba said police were examining photos of the Salafis' weekly protests for suspects.
In the weeks before the attack, al-Qaida militants on the Web spewing calls for "jihad," or holy war, on Egypt's Christians laid out everything anyone would need to carry out a bombing.
One widely circulated posting includes a so-called "Jihadi Encyclopedia for the Destruction of the Cross," with a series of 10 videos describing how to build a bomb.
In the videos, an unidentified militant in a white lab coat and a black mask is shown listing the ingredients to make TNT and mixing up the chemicals in beakers.
The site lists Coptic Christian churches in Egypt, along with phone numbers and addresses — including Alexandria's Saints Church. "Blow up the churches while they are celebrating Christmas or any other time when the churches are packed," it says.
It probably bears mentioning that the Copts have a miserable history of anti-Semitism. I continue to discuss this incident despite that history, because it's rare that we get to see a terror attack from up close like the videos that are available from Friday night's attack, and because I am doing all I can to quash the scurrilous attempt to blame this attack on Israel and Jews.
Labels: Alexandria church terror attack, Christian Copts, incitement, Islamic terrorism
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 10:55 AM
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