
The Islamic State claimed a part in all the attacks, though it’s hard to know whether the group was mainly the true instigator or just the vicious inspiration.
Predictions of assaults on civilians during Ramadan are an annual event–as are the attacks themselves, whether by the Islamic State, at large in Iraq and Syria, or others in the alphabet soup of terrorist organizations.
Ramadan is the month in which Muslims celebrate Mohammed’s direct receiving of God’s word. The common holiday greeting is Ramadan Karim–“Generous Ramadan.”
The Islamic State this week not only invaded two cities on Syria’s border with Turkey, but slaughtered civilian families in their homes. China banned Ramadan celebrations in the Islamic province of Xinjiang. The ban, meant to reduce possible violence, instead provoked a series of 18 stabbings of ethnic Chinese by Uighur Muslims.
The terror targets are different but the basic motive the same: to hit at places that are festered with apostates. That includes not only the France of the West, but newly democratic Tunisia that hosts foreign tourists (in revealing bathing suits, no less!!) and Shiites, disdained by fundamentalist Salafi and Wahhabi Sunni Muslims as “polytheists.” A heretic may also be any Muslim who does not follow the Islamic State line on jihad.
Be shocked but not surprised by today’s wave of bombing.
Islamic State urging violence against unbelievers.