Scores Are Killed by Suicide Bomb Attack at Historic Church in Pakistan • Kenya: 'If You Were Muslim They Let You Go • Sikh Columbia Professor, Attacked In Possible Hate Crime • Navy Yard shooting puts Buddhism in spotlight: Column • Virginia GOP Official Refuses to Apologize for Anti-Semitic Pope Joke
Last week's top news, from our perspective:
Scores Are Killed by Suicide Bomb Attack at Historic Church in Pakistan
A suicide attack on a historic church in northwestern Pakistan killed at least 78 people on Sunday in one of the deadliest attacks on the Christian minority in Pakistan in years.
The attack occurred as worshipers left All Saints Church in the old quarter of the regional capital, Peshawar, after a service on Sunday morning. Up to 600 people had attended and were leaving to receive free food being distributed on the lawn outside when two explosions ripped through the crowd.
Kenya: 'If You Were Muslim They Let You Go
Witnesses to the attack on a shopping centre in Nairobi say gunmen executed anyone who could not recite an Islamic prayer.
Saadia Ahmed, a radio presenter from Nairobi, said: "We heard three explosions outside the building then all of a sudden we heard gunshots and people ducked down.
"A lot of people were shot while they were trying to escape.
"I saw one of the gunmen with an AK-47 and later two of them were talking and it sounded like Somali or Arabic."
Ms Ahmed said the attackers released people who were able to prove they could speak Arabic. The current death toll stands at 68.
Sikh Columbia Professor, Attacked In Possible Hate Crime
A Columbia University professor was assaulted on Saturday night in what police say is being investigated as a hate crime.
According to a New York Police Department source, Dr. Prabhjot Singh, who is Sikh and wears a turban and a beard, was attacked at 8:15 p.m. while walking along 110th Street near Lennox Avenue in upper Manhattan. An unknown suspect or suspects shouted anti-Muslim statements, knocked the professor down and punched him numerous times in the face.
Navy Yard shooting puts Buddhism in spotlight: Column
Aaron Alexis allegedly shot and killed 12 people in cold blood before being killed himself by police on Monday at the Washington Navy Yard.
Alexis was a government contractor and former Navy reservist. But was also a Buddhist who, according to news reports, chanted frequently, wore an amulet of the Buddha around his neck, and regularly attended services at Wat Busayadhammavanaram Meditation Center in Fort Worth, Texas. How are we to make sense of this anomaly — a follower of the Buddha who shoots to kill?
Our stereotype of Buddhists as peacemakers is not unfounded. The Buddha was by all accounts a man of peace, and ahimsa (non-violence) has long been a Buddhist value.
Virginia GOP Official Refuses to Apologize for Anti-Semitic Pope Joke
A GOP official in Virginia refused to apologize for an anti-Semitic joke, although the party’s candidate for governor called it inappropriate.
“I did not tell an anti-Semitic joke,” John Whitbeck, the Republican Party’s chairman in its 10th Congressional District, in northern Virginia, told the Free Beacon on Wednesday. “I told a joke I heard from a priest at a church service.”
Whitbeck, introducing Ken Cuccinelli, the state’s attorney general and GOP candidate for governor, at a rally on Tuesday related a joke with a punchline that had Jews seeking payment from the Vatican for the Last Supper.