In the Name of God: The Everlastingly Loving and Caring

“But even by recent standards in Egypt,” said The NY Times in a recent article, “where militants have blown up Christian worshipers as they knelt at church pews and gunned down pilgrims in buses, the attack on Friday was unusually ruthless.”

The article was referring to the Nov 24 attack by militant savages, who gunned down over 300 worshipers, including children, at a Sufi mosque in the Sinai. As an American Muslim of Egyptian descent, it disgusted me to the core.

And so did the attacks on Christians in their churches by similar militant savages.

Yet, why was the attack “unusually ruthless”?

Is attacking Christians “usual” in Egypt? Is ISIS killing Christians in a church “usual ruthlessness” by “Egyptian standards”? Again, as someone who is of Egyptian ancestry, who still has family in Egypt, there is nothing “usual” about killing Christians or Muslims in their places of worship.

Killing anyone in Egypt is totally unusual and completely unbecoming of the beautiful people of Egypt that I know and love.

The bottom line is this: the savages behind this latest attack, just like the ones behind the previous ones, are just that, savages. Our Prophet called them the “dogs of Hellfire.” They are ruthless all the time, and it should come as no surprise that they would attack a mosque in Egypt.

We can never come to think that killings just as the one at the Sufi mosque are “usual.” They are not, and they never will be.