Holy week attack on Christians

The attack on Christian students in Kenya has resulted in 140 Christian students being slaughtered by the Muslim group Al-Shabaab. The Guardian reports,

When the gunmen arrived at his dormitory he could hear them opening doors and asking if the people who had hidden inside whether they were Muslims or Christians.

“If you were a Christian you were shot on the spot,” he said. “With each blast of the gun I thought I was going to die.”

Neo-neocon writes,

he pattern for attacks by this group has been to separate Muslims from Christians and murder the latter. There’s nothing equivocal about it; it’s a religious war.

The New York Times, on the other hand, is mealy-mouthed in the extreme. The headline doesn’t mention religion, and it’s only in paragraph four that it comes up, and then very tepidly [emphasis mine]:

The Shabab, an extremist group based in Somalia and affiliated with Al Qaeda, issued a statement through a radio station it controls claiming responsibility for the attack. It said its fighters attacked the university early Thursday morning, began separating Muslims from non-Muslims and started an “operation against the infidels.” The group said in its statement that its fighters were still inside the university.

So we have an “extremist” group. Although the paper does manage to say it’s affiliated with Al Qaeda, it is not characterized as Muslim, which might just be one of its most salient characteristics. It “separates” Muslims from “non-Muslims” (Jews? Hindus? No: Christians, but the word is never mentioned, because the Times is just using a quote from the perpetrators as its description). They “start an operation” which is a euphemism for “kill many and hold the rest hostage.”

The article is long, very long, but not once does it use the word “Christian.” That’s quite a feat. In fact, it goes out of its way to emphasize that the “extremists” seem to target all who are not Muslims, and that this is some sort of mixed group. But the reports in the Guardian and other papers make it clear they were explicitly going after Christians. And by the way, the most-wanted leader of the terrorists is named Mohammed Mohamud, which I’m sure has nothing to do with Islam.

Read more here.