A Muslim suicide bomber enters a building and blows himself and dozens of other unsuspecting people up. We hear such news often and risk becoming desensitized to it. After all, the slayers and the slain are just nameless, faceless statistics.
Therefore, because one picture is worth a thousand words, below are several images and videos of the most recent Islamic suicide attack, that of St. Peter’s Cathedral in Cairo, which killed at least 25 Christian worshippers—the majority of whom were women and children—and seriously wounded more than twice that much. Most of these have not appeared on any English language media.
WARNING: Some of these pictures and videos are graphic. (Those who can handle them might also appreciate the even more telling (and graphic) pictures of the 2011 Islamic suicide bombing of another church, in Baghdad, which left nearly 60 dead and also shredded the body of the suicide bomber.)
First, below are the remains of the suicide bomber himself, Mahmoud Shafiq Muhammad Mustafa, who was reportedly around 22-years-old and is variously described as being affiliated with either the Islamic State or Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood or both:
Below is a picture of the suicide-bomber when he was alive (center) and his reconstructed face (right) after forensics put it together in an effort to match it with the center picture:
The following video shows the moment of the blast, beginning around the :50 second mark. Mahmoud Shafiq, the suicide bomber, appears entering the cathedral complex seconds before it, at the bottom/left of the video:
The following is one of the first videos to be taken inside the cathedral after the blast. Warning: Dead and scattered bodies appear:
Here is another early video:
Husbands lost wives, wives lost husbands, parents lost children and children lost parents on that day. Below are some of Mahmoud Shafiq’s child victims (images are fuzzy as they are based on still frames from a video):
This boy, who appears with the blood of others (his parents?) still on him, will likely never forget that day.
Below are several pictures of some of the women who died, taken in happier times. Many more can be viewed here. Stories of loss and mourning are many on Arabic Christian websites. One slain young lady was engaged and on her way to being married in a couple of weeks; another had just finished medical school and on her way to becoming a doctor; one mother lost her only two children, two daughters.
Here are some of those who are hospitalized in critical condition:
Below is a video clip of an average looking Muslim woman in the streets of Egypt jubilantly celebrating the St. Peter’s church bombing. She triumphantly yells “Allahu Akbar!” and says that “our beloved prophet Muhammad is paying you infidels [Christians] back” for rejecting “tawhid” (monotheism), which “must be proclaimed in every corner of Egypt!”
The following video depicts Coptic Christians standing around St. Peter’s moments after the bombing and defiantly proclaiming in Arabic the complete Nicene Creed — a thing reportedly unprecedented in Muslim Egypt, as the Creed repeatedly asserts what Islam (e.g., Koran 9:30) considers to be the height of shirk, or blasphemy: that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
Such is the aftermath of what is otherwise often perfunctorily reported in the media as a “suicide bombing that killed x people”—a phenomenon that continues to grow in recent times. Even in the West, Islamic hate for Christian churches is on the rise. Last October an African Muslim refugee invaded and vandalized four churches in Rome (surveillance video here); in September another Muslim refugee attacked and vandalized several churches in Spain. There have been several other similar attacks in recent weeks and months—to say nothing of Islam’s war on the cross which has also spread into the West.
Even in the United States, where Muslim numbers are miniscule compared to parts of Europe, the same hate for and targeting of churches is growing. Earlier this year, a Muslim man “made plans to shoot up a church full of Christians in Detroit, according to court records documenting his Internet conversations with an undercover FBI agent.”
All of this is in keeping with Islam’s Rule of Numbers, which holds that inasmuch as Muslim numbers grow in the West, so too do distinctly Islamic phenomena grow with them—in this case, attacks on Christian churches and worshippers. Currently nothing too “spectacular” has occurred—such as last week’s church bombing in Cairo—but this may just be a matter of time.