Sri Lanka names local Islamist group behind Easter Sunday massacre
Domestic jihadi group Thowfeek Jamaath may have foreign backers, government says
The Sri Lankan government has blamed a domestic Islamist group, National Thowfeek Jamaath, for carrying out the Easter Sunday attacks. The local jihadi group may have the backing of foreign terrorist networks, a leading government official said.
“We do not believe these attacks were carried out by a group of people who were confined to this country,” cabinet spokesman Rajitha Senaratne said. “We are now investigating the international support for them, and their other links, how they produced the suicide bombers here, and how they produced bombs like this.”
A series of suicide bombings on churches and hotels killed at least 290 people and left 500 more injured. Around 39 foreigners, including “several” U.S. nationals, are also among the dead, the U.S. State Department confirmed. Anders Holch Povlsen, the Dutch billionaire and owner of the clothing retailer Asos, lost three of his four children in Sunday’s bombing.
All seven suicide bombers have been identified as Sri Lankan nationals. Authorities were withholding the names of the attackers, but local news outlets named Abu Mohammad and Zahran Hashim as two of the dead suicide bombers.
Local newspaper Ceylon Today reported the revelations made by the Sri Lankan government:
The Sri Lankan Government believes a local Islamist extremist group called the National Thowheeth Jama’ath (NTJ) was behind the deadly suicide bomb attacks that killed nearly 300 people, Government Spokesman Rajitha Senaratne said Monday (22).
Senaratne, who is also a Cabinet Minister, added that the Government was investigating whether the group had “international support”.
Documents seen by AFP show Sri Lanka’s Police Chief issued a warning on 11 April, saying that a “foreign intelligence agency” had reported NTJ was planning attacks on churches and the Indian High Commission.
Not much is known about the NTJ, a radical Muslim group that has been linked to the vandalising of Buddhist statues.
A Police source told AFP that all 24 people in custody in connection with the attacks belong to an “extremist” group, but did not specify further.
The Easter Sunday massacre is the worst act of violence in the country since the bloody Tamil-Sinhalese ethnic conflict that ended almost ten years ago.
The government may have had prior warning of the attacks. The country’s police chief had alerted top government officials on an impending Islamist terror attack on Christian churches just ten days ahead of the strike. “A foreign intelligence agency has reported that the NTJ [National Thowheeth Jama’ath] is planning to carry out suicide attacks targeting prominent churches as well as the Indian high commission in Colombo,” the police chief Pujuth Jayasundara noted in an official communique dated April 11.
Sir Lanka’s leading Catholic clergy, the Archbishop of Colombo, Malcolm Ranjith, described the attackers as “animals” who needed to be punished “mercilessly.” “I would also like to ask the government to hold a very impartial, strong inquiry and find out who is responsible for this act and also to punish them mercilessly, because only animals can behave like that,” Cardinal Ranjith said. The response was in sharp contrast with the remarks made by Pope Francis who prayed “for those who have tragically perished” in his Easter address.
The Sri Lankan government has imposed a state of emergency and shut down Facebook and other social media platforms “to prevent incorrect and wrong information” from spreading. The authorities are desperately trying to prevent the repeat of the 2018 anti-Muslim riots that began after reports of forced conversion of local Buddhists to Islam and the desecration of ancient religious sites.
Buddhists make up for about 75 percent of the population, while the Muslims count for around 10 percent of the country’s 22 million population. Christians form the smallest religious minority on the island nation, with most of the country’s seven percent Christians identifying as Catholic.
Video: Sri Lanka identifies Islamist terror group National Thowfeek Jamaath in Easter bombings
[Cover image via YouTube]
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I am shocked! Who would have guessed? (sarc)
At least the Sri Lanka government doesn’t use euphemism to describe the perps.
They can’t afford to be delusional. You wouldn’t use euphemisms either if you had just wrapped up a bloody civil war only a decade ago. It was a different ethno-religious mix, sure, but the Sri Lankans always knew round two with the Muslims was a distinct possibility.
Of course any human being who isn’t suffering from Stockholm Syndrome or otherwise isn’t being willfully blind would have been 100% sure that this was the work of Muslims. Not “Islamists” or whatever pretzel-logic derived-word the dhimmis wish to resort to.
This is mainstream Islam. The Quran tells Muslims that Christians believe in three separate deities.
Surah 5:116
“And [beware the Day] when Allah will say, “O Jesus, Son of Mary, did you say to the people, ‘Take me and my mother as deities besides Allah ?'” He will say, “Exalted are You! It was not for me to say that to which I have no right. If I had said it, You would have known it. You know what is within myself, and I do not know what is within Yourself. Indeed, it is You who is Knower of the unseen.”
And that Jesus never died on the cross, but instead Allah raised him bodily into heaven before he could be taken into custody.
Surah 4:157
“And [for] their saying, “Indeed, we have killed the Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary, the messenger of Allah .” And they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him; but [another] was made to resemble him to them. And indeed, those who differ over it are in doubt about it. They have no knowledge of it except the following of assumption. And they did not kill him, for certain.”
Let me begin by remarking that no first century Jew* would have bragged about killing the Messiah. Christ’s earliest followers didn’t consider themselves to have invented some new religion. They considered themselves Jews, and considered themselves Jews for quite a number of years, who accepted Jesus’ claim that He is the Jewish Messiah. The Jews who would have wanted to execute Jesus did so because they rejected his claim that He was the Messiah. And therefore had to be executed for blasphemy.
Second, per the Quran their version of Jesus, Issa, denied he ever claimed to be divine, and Allah denies he ever died on the cross, and therefore since he never died (he lives on in heaven) he couldn’t have possibly have been resurrected.
So, let’s add this up. Muslims believe that on Christmas we are celebrating the birth of the biological son of Allah and Miriam (Mary).
So they blow up and/or shoot the congregants of churches all over the world because we are pagans who worship multiple gods.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/egypt-church-bombing-sours-coptic-christmas-in-us
I hope three links won’t be too much because when it comes to attacking Coptic churches in Egypt or elsewhere, we’re not talking about Islamists as ignorant people wish to delude themselves. Around Christmas, in Mosques all over the world but particularly in Egypt angry Friday sermons typically center on the theme that Christians are pagans who worship other gods besides Allah which is the unforgiveable sin of Shirk; assigning partners to Allah. And after these sermons Christians have been attacked by enraged mobs in their churches.
https://www.dw.com/en/crowds-attack-coptic-church-in-egypt/a-41919715
Nobody in the enraged mob may be motivated to strap on a suicide vest and walk into the church and take as many Christians with him as he can. But the mob is motivated to attack the church for the same reason a suicide bomber would be; Islam. No “ist” or “ism” to it.
We also see similar attacks on Easter. Easter is when Christians reaffirm Christ’s divinity and their faith in the other central tenets of Christianity (that He died on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins and rose again on the third day) that is in direct opposition to what it says in the Quran. So it’s definitely an in-your-face rejection of the Quran, Allah, and Muhammad.
Typically Muslims react in accordance with their scripture (Surah 9):
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pakistan-blast-idUSKCN0WT0HR
I can’t get it out of my head when that idiot Obama demanded to know how it would change things if he used the words “Islamic terrorism.” This is how; he’d understand the motivations of the people behind these latest attacks in Sri Lanka, and all over the world. Instead he chose to ideologically insist Islam has no connection to terrorism.
*Note how the Quran gets both Jewish and Christian theology wrong. Because the Quran also calls Jesus the Messiah. But it’s easy to prove that whoever wrote the Quran had no clue as to the meaning of the word. When it comes to Christian theology, assuming Muhammad or someone like him had anything to do with it, it reflects precisely how an illiterate caravan trader (and therefore camel breeder) would understand what Christians meant by “Son of God.” In another verse in the Quran Allah demands to know, “How can I have a son when I have not consort.”
According to the lore Muhammad received “revelation” starting when he was forty years old. So all his life he was a pagan, and therefore the Quran reflects a pagan’s view of Christ’s divinity. Just like Alexander thought he was the son of a human mother and Zeus, Christians must have meant Allah mated with Miriam and produced Issa. Which is of course blasphemy.
Idiot President’s and other dignitaries who refuse to understand that the Quran isn’t a book of peace and it deliberately puts itself in opposition to Judaism and Christianity should stop issuing congratulatory Eid al Fitr pronouncements to Muslims. These people are so stupid that when they praise Abraham in those pronouncements they think Islam has the same Abraham we do. No they don’t.
Surah 60:4
“There has already been for you an excellent pattern in Abraham and those with him, when they said to their people, “Indeed, we are disassociated from you and from whatever you worship other than Allah . We have denied you, and there has appeared between us and you animosity and hatred forever until you believe in Allah alone” except for the saying of Abraham to his father, “I will surely ask forgiveness for you, but I have not [power to do] for you anything against Allah . Our Lord, upon You we have relied, and to You we have returned, and to You is the destination.”
Allah commands Muslims to model themselves on Abraham when he tells his former people, including his own father, that there will be enmity and hatred between them forever until they worship Allah alone. But they are not to follow his example when he says he will pray for forgiveness for them.
So the confused Muslims scratch their heads and wonder, “I don’t know why the leader of the filthy infidels is telling us we’re on the right track when we hate them, but alrighty then, we’ll continue down this path.”
Just stop, idiots, you’re making things worse.
I watched all three major networks’ reporting on this atrocity yesterday, and none of them even hinted that this might be an Islamic terrorist plot, even though they knew (but did not say) one of the terrorists was named Mohammad.
Islamic, no way!
Its not just a few Islamist groups.. Its everyone who practices the Cult of Islam!
Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner. The key word is “practices.” About half of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims have no use for the vomitous ideology and would love to be shed of it. The problem is if your father is a Muslim then you are a Muslim and you’re under a death sentence if you try to leave it.
Yousef al-Qaradawi is probably the most influential cleric in the world. He has a show on Al Jazeera which has an audience of at least forty million worldwide and he is the spiritual leader of the world’s largest terrorist organizations that the USG refuses to acknowledge is a terrorist organization in the world, the Muslim Brotherhood.
In a rare candid moment he admitted that if Islam didn’t have a death sentence for apostasy then Islam would have ceased to exist by the 8th century. Then there are Muslims who are in no hurry to leave Islam because they never actually were in Islam in the first place. I’m thinking of the Muslims who live in the Muslim majority Soviet Socialist Republics of the former Soviet Union; Azerbaijan (which is essentially an ally of Israel), Kazakhstan, Kirghizia, Turkmenia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan. I understand some radicalization has taken place but for a long time after the break up of the USSR they were purely secular vodka loving, pork eating, Mosque avoiding Muslims. Sort of like how secular Jews identify themselves as Jews but they don’t know how to be Jews and aren’t at all interested in finding out.
I’d say about 40% of Muslims worldwide are dangerous. Not that most of this percentage wants to martyr themselves. But they want sharia, they want to stone adulterers, kill apostates, etc. They share the same attitudes and support the jihadi murderers. What they will do is, oh I dunno, form rape gangs in places like Stockholm, Cologne, all across Britain, etc. Islam teaches them that uncovered infidel women are prostitutes who exist only for their sexual pleasure. Yet, as was the case in Rotherham, more often in their kabab shops or driving their taxis the world is upside down and it’s the Muslim men serving the uncovered infidel women. This isn’t how per Islam things should be but it’s nothing that climbing on top of a 12 y.o. British girl, showing her who is in charge, and turning her into your virtual sex slave and passing her around to your friends from the Mosque won’t fix.
“Some people did something”
Pope Francis is a weak, accommodating figurehead; a shepherd does not sit idle as wolves savage his flock. Yet he has time to denigrate American illegal immigration policy?
It’s no wonder leftist-progressive atheists fete him.
The Vatican has 40’+ walls for protection. In Reaganesque fashion, “Mr. Pope, tear down this wall”.
It is suicide for the west to let these people in. Being politically correct has a price. I read an article of various countries where the Muslim population is 10%, 20%, 30, 40%, etc. Past a certain %, the Muslim demands increase and minority rights decrease. The west is foolish, and dumb as a doornail. A cancer is growing, and the west has no stomach to fight it.
I’m Catholic and think you are being far too kind to Francis the Marxist.
Well knock me over with a feather!!!!
The religion of peace strikes again.
I have never been able to understand what the word “diversity” actually means… but I defy anyone to tell me where or how it has really benefited any society.
Conversely, I can point to dozens of places around the world where they are tearing each other apart because of their “diversity”…. including Sri Lanka.
In the west diversity = the left hates white people.
And you’re right. Diversity nearly always leads to the Balkans war.
The only place diversity hasn’t led to disaster is Switzerland, and we will not be Switzerland. It just isn’t in the cards. And Switzerland wouldn’t have become Switzerland if a significant number of Muslims were part of the mix.
You read the post, right? 75% are Buddhist. Christians are less than 10% of the population, most of them Catholic, around 6.2% with Protestants 1.4%. How far would you like to take a stand against Sri Lankan diversity in light of those numbers?
Follow the money. You’ll find it intermigles with obama/jarrett, omar and tlaib.
“Sir Lanka’s leading Catholic clergy, the Archbishop of Colombo, Malcolm Ranjith, described the attackers as “animals” who needed to be punished “mercilessly.””
Be careful Archbishop, you wouldn’t want to be accused of inciting violence against the poor, peace loving Muslims.
local Islamist extremist group
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delete the word extremists, make is succinct and correct
Motives unknown?
‘Easter worshippers’ [smh]
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton made a conscience decision to be openly hostile toward Christians. That’s about as rude as a politician can be to any group.
The Muslims were also Easter worshippers. They knew what day it was; that’s why they planted the bombs on the Christian holy day to kill as many Christians as they could in worship of Allah.
Congrats, Hillary! and Obama. You’ve watered down the language so much as to make it sufficiently meaningless it could apply equally to the victims of the attack or the perpetrators of the attack.
“Note how much more aggressive the tone from Mrs. Clinton when it was Muslims being attacked vs Christians being attacked.”
http://dcwhispers.com/see-the-difference-hillary-clinton-version/#5QUyTiegzJRx2YKY.97
Thanks for posting this site!!!
Checking it out.
Welcome.
Pretty reliable.
Unlike the New Zealand massacre, CNN moved this off the “front page” very quickly.