The Stream

On June 22, Muslims murdered 25 Christians — mostly women and children — and wounded nearly 100 more inside a church in Syria.

According to eyewitnesses, one or two armed men entered the Mar Elyas Greek Orthodox Church in Damascus during mass, when it was packed with some 350 worshippers, and indiscriminately opened fire before detonating an explosive belt inside the sanctuary.

“When we got to the church, we found the doorway filled with body parts,” said a relief helper who arrived soon after the attack. Photos showed charred and blood-splattered floors, with shrapnel peppering the church walls.

While much can be said about this latest Islamic terror attack on a Christian church, my question today is simple and straightforward: Why is this not enough to prompt the United Nations and other international bodies to take notice and speak up the way they do whenever Muslims are the victims of non-Muslims?

One Act of Violence

For example, two years ago, the United Nations declared March 15 to be the “International Day to Combat Islamophobia.” What prompted this assertive move? Simple: On March 15, 2019, an armed Australian man entered two mosques in New Zealand and opened fire, killing 51 and injuring 40 Muslim worshippers.

If one attack on a mosque was enough for the UN to institutionalize a special day to speak up for Islam, what about the countless, often worse, Muslim attacks on non-Muslim places of worship? Why have they not elicited a similar response from the UN and other governmental bodies?

In case you think last Sunday’s horrific attack on a Syrian church is some kind of aberration, here is a brief list of other fatal Muslim attacks on Christian churches in recent times, ordered by number of casualties.

Brace yourself.

A Long List of Atrocities

• Sri Lanka (April 21, 2018): On Easter Sunday, Muslim terrorists bombed three churches and three hotels; 359 people, mostly Christians, were killed and more than 500 injured.
• Nigeria (April 20, 2014): On Easter Sunday, Islamic terrorists torched a packed church; 150 Christians were burned alive.
• Pakistan (March 27, 2016): Following Easter Sunday services, Islamic terrorists bombed a park where Christians had congregated; more than 70 — mostly women and children — were killed. “There was human flesh on the walls of our house,” recalled a witness.
• Democratic Republic of Congo (February 2025): Muslim militants of the Allied Democratic Forces rounded up and marched 70 Christians to a Protestant church, tied them up, and decapitated all of them with knives.
• Iraq (Oct. 31, 2011): Muslims stormed a church in Baghdad during worship and opened fire indiscriminately before detonating their suicide vests. Nearly 60 Christians — including women, children, and even babies — were killed (graphic pictures of aftermath here).
• Nigeria (April 8, 2012): On Easter Sunday, explosives planted by Muslims detonated near two packed churches; more than 50 were killed, and unknown numbers injured.
• Nigeria (June 5, 2022): On Pentecost Sunday, Muslims opened fire on a packed church, killing more than 50 and injuring dozens.
• Egypt (April 9, 2017): On Palm Sunday, Muslims bombed two packed churches; at least 45 were killed, more than 100 injured.
• Nigeria (Dec. 25, 2011): During Christmas Day services, Muslim terrorists shot up and bombed three churches; 37 were killed and nearly 57 injured.
• Egypt (Dec. 11, 2016): An Islamic suicide bombing of two churches left 29 people killed and 47 injured (graphic images of aftermath here).
• Burkina Faso (Aug. 25, 2024): Muslim militants slit the throatsof 26 Christians inside a church.
• Russia (June 23, 2024): Muslim terrorists launched attacks on several churches and synagoguesin the Muslim region of Dagestan. At least 21 people were killed and dozens wounded. Terrorists yelling, “Allahu akbar!” slit the throat of an elderly and ailing Orthodox priest. At least one church was set aflame.
• Nigeria: (April 20, 2012): Muslims slaughtered 20 Christians inside their church during Sunday worship.
• Democratic Republic of Congo (Jan. 15, 2023): Muslims bombed a church during a Sunday baptismal ceremony. At least 14 Christians were blown to pieces. The Islamic State, which claimed the attack, said 20 to 63 others were seriously wounded.
• Indonesia (May 13, 2018): Muslims bombed three churches; 13 Christians were killed and dozens injured.
• Egypt (Jan. 1, 2011): Muslim terrorists bombed an Alexandrian church during New Year’s Eve mass; at least 21 Christians were killed. In the words of eyewitnesses, “body parts were strewn all over the street outside” and “were brought inside the church after some Muslims started stepping on them and chanting Jihadi chants,” including “Allahu Akbar!”
• Philippines (Jan. 27, 2019): Muslim terrorists bombed a cathedral; at least 20 Christians were killed, and more than 100 injured.
• Indonesia (Dec. 24, 2000): During Christmas Eve services, Muslim terrorists bombed several churches; 18 were killed and over 100 injured.
• Burkina Faso (Feb. 25, 2024): Muslim gunmen stormed into a Catholic church during a service, opened fire, and murdered 15 worshippers.
• Pakistan (Mar. 15, 2015): Muslim suicide bombers killed at least 14 Christians in attacks on two churches.
• Germany (Dec. 19, 2016): Near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin, a Muslim man drove a truck into a Christmas market; 13 were killed and 55 injured.
• Egypt (Dec. 29, 2017): Muslim gunmen shot up a church in Cairo; nine Christians were killed.
• Egypt (Jan. 6, 2010): Following Christmas Eve mass (according to the Orthodox calendar), Muslims shot six Christians dead as they exited their church.
• Russia (Feb. 18, 2018): A Muslim man carrying a knife and a double-barreled shotgun entered a church and opened fire; five people — all women — were killed, and at least five more injured.
• France (July 26, 2016): Muslims entered a church and slit the throat of the officiating priest, 84-year-old Fr. Jacques Hamel, and took four nuns hostage until French authorities shot the terrorists dead.
• Turkey (Jan. 28, 2024): Two masked gunmen entered a Catholic church and opened fire. One man was killed and another injured. Surveillance footage showed the rest of the 40 or so congregants fleeing in a panic.

The above list is hardly comprehensive. In Nigeria alone, where one Christian is slaughtered every two hours, Muslims have destroyed or torched some 20,000 churches and Christian schools. How many undocumented souls perished in those largely unreported terror attacks?

All the Things We Don’t Even Know

Nor does the above list include any of the many botched terror attacks. For example, an attack on an Indonesian church during Palm Sunday services in 2021, where only the suicide bombers — a Muslim man and his pregnant wife — died.

Or more recently, when last year Alexander Scott Mercurio, an 18-year-old convert to Islam, was arrested in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho for “planning a suicide attack on multiple churches” to be carried out the next day. According to the report, “Law enforcement claims that he was going to attack local places of worship with knives, guns and flames.”

Nor does the above list include the daily non-fatal attacks and desecrations of churches, which especially plague European regions with large Muslim populations.

Even so, based on just the above well-documented examples, Muslims have massacred well over 1,000 Christians who were otherwise peacefully worshipping in their churches.

The Real Pattern

Hence that most pressing of questions: If one non-Muslim attack, which claimed 51 Muslim lives, was enough for the UN to establish an “international day to combat Islamophobia,” why have countless Muslim attacks on churches not been enough for the UN to establish an “international day to combat Christianophobia”?

This question becomes more pressing when one realizes that, whereas the New Zealand mosque attack was, indeed, an aberration — evidenced by its singularity — Muslim attacks on churches are very common (including historically). As discussed here, seldom does a month pass in the Muslim world, and increasingly in the West, without several assaults or harassments taking place.

Moreover, it’s important to point out that those who terrorize churches often share little with each other. As seen, they come from widely different nations (Nigeria, Iraq, Philippines, etc.), are of different races, speak different languages, and live under different social, political, and economic conditions.

The only thing they do share is their religion, Islam (which, unsurprisingly, teaches hostility for churches and “infidels,” though we’re not supposed to acknowledge that).

In other words, Muslim attacks on churches are ideologically driven, have long been and continue to be systemic and systematic, and are therefore an actual, ongoing problem that the international community needs to highlight and ameliorate.

Yet the UN would have us ignore the ongoing massacres of countless Christians and worshippers as unfortunate byproducts of misplaced “Muslim grievances” — and instead fixate on one solitary incident: a Western man killing 51 Muslims.

This, for the UN, is what truly evinces a “pattern” and is in dire need of recognition and response. And that response is to shut up all those who dare connect the dots and expose Islam’s heavily documented pattern of violence against non-Muslims — which, make no mistake, is precisely what “combatting Islamophobia” is all about.

Raymond Ibrahim, author of Defenders of the West and Sword and Scimitar, is the Distinguished Senior Shillman Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and the Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.