While the world seems to have stopped at the deadly conflict between the State of Israel and the Palestinians, specifically speaking the terrorist organization of Hamas, hardly any mention has been made to the school bombings last week outside of the Afghan capital city of Kabul that killed 85 people, mostly Hazara Shi’ite girls. The attack left books and backpacks, as well as bodies, strewn across the ground, and shook a country already battered after decades of violence—also last week a bomb ripped through a mosque in northern Kabul during Friday prayers, killing 12 worshippers, and wounding 15.

The neighborhood where the attack occurred is mostly populated by the Hazaras—a Persian-speaking ethnic group native to, and primarily residing in, the mountainous region of Hazarajat, in central Afghanistan.

Survivors said the bombs were timed to go off as the girls left school; hundreds of girls were distributing charitable items as the explosion went off. As stated by Zaher Wahab, an Afghan-American professor: “The [subsequent] explosions were so strong that some of the students completely evaporated, they disappeared, they couldn’t be found…. It took the police about an hour to respond” despite being just one kilometer away from the site.

The Afghan government blamed the Taliban, though the group denies responsibility. 

The massacres came amid an uptick in violence throughout Afghanistan, including heavy fighting around the capital of southern Helmand province, Lashkar Gah, that started as U.S. troops began withdrawing at the beginning of the month in line with President Joe Biden’s order to fully leave the country by September.

There also hardly any coverage in the mainstream media of the three people who were murdered killed in an overnight attack on an area of northern Burkina Faso by Islamic militants last Friday—the African country of Burkina Faso, since 2015, has struggled to fight back against increasingly frequent and deadly jihadist attacks from groups including the al-Qaeda associate Group to Support Islam and Muslims (GSIM) and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (EIGS). Approximately 1,300 people have died and more than a million have been dislocated from their homes.

Nor was hardly anything said of the five people who were killed by Muslim “terrorists who came on motorbikes,”  last Wednesday in an attack on a village in the western Tillaberi region of Niger, near the border with Mali, as the country celebrated the Eid al-Fitr holiday marking the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan—jihadist attacks targeting civilians have multiplied since the start of the year with more than 200 people killed in three series of assaults against villages and camps in the west of the country.

What about the total of 1,460 Christians that have been killed in Nigeria by Muslims between January and April of this year?

The ultimate reason of such concealment is because it would mean confronting the Islamic doctrine that sanctions this type of violence.

Indoctrinating the Youth

This is not to underestimate the tragedy that is occurring in Israel where both Israelis and Palestinians have suffered casualties—having discussed in a previous article the complex origins of the current events, the scope of this one is different. Yet nothing is being said as to how Muslim Palestinian authorities continue to indoctrinate their children to commit violence.

During the October-November 2000 conflict, for example, the Palestinians made much political capital of the number of children killed by the Israeli security forces.  It must be remembered that these youngsters were in the middle of rioting mobs, often with snipers firing from behind them.

The children were there, in many cases, because the Palestine Authority had closed the schools so the children could join the mob. Although the Palestinian media agents know how to touch western sensibilities, their own attitude to the loss of these young lives is not one that we understand.  

The mother of thirteen-year-old Mohammed al-Durra who was seen around the world, cowering behind his father said: “I am happy that he has been martyred.”  Presumably she genuinely believes that her son, like her husband, were faithful Muslims as they sought to comply with the hadiths that order the killing of Jews:

• Narrated ‘Abdullah bin ‘Umar: Allah’s Messenger said: “You [Muslims] will fight with the Jews until some of them will hide behind stones. The stones will (betray them) saying, ‘O ‘Abdullah [slave of Allah]! There is a Jew hiding behind me; so kill him.’” —Sahih Bukhari, 2925
• Abu Huraira reported Allah’s Messenger as saying: “The last hour would not come unless the Muslims will fight against the Jews and the Muslims would kill them until the Jews would hide themselves behind a stone or a tree and a stone or a tree would say: Muslim, or the servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him; but the tree Gharqad would not say, for it is the tree of the Jews.” —Sahih Muslim 2922

While the West and NGOs contend that they can conquer Islamist terror with arms, they fail to get at the root of the problem: the ideology that continues to be indoctrinated in the youth, as with the Almajiri boys in Nigeria.

Derived from the word hajarah (to flee one’s country, to migrate, to emigrate), these boys are supposed to be “knowledge” seekers as commanded by Allah in the Quran:

“And whoever emigrates for the cause of Allah will find on the earth many [alternative] locations and abundance. And whoever leaves his home as an emigrant to Allah and His Messenger and then death overtakes him—his reward has already become incumbent upon Allah.”—Sura 4, 100

For many families, the Almajiri educational system offers an alternative to sending their children to a state school which costs money—affluent families also send their sons to such madrasas. Most of the religious schools provide free tuition. But the Almajiri pupils have to take care of their own daily needs, which is why many of them go begging when they do not have to be in the classroom.

Censoring the Truth

As Dr. Bill Warner, founder of the Center for the Study of Political Islam, who has recently been censored by Google, FaceBook, and PayPal, and labeled as a racist for presenting objective facts about the Islamic texts, stated this is all part of a politically correct censorship:

“Censorship and de-platforming are radical changes from our past of freedom of speech and expression. My life has totally changed after censorship for the worst. This is not an accident, but a planned program to drive people such as me out of the marketplace of ideas and out of business. Instead of facts, reason and discussion, we have descended into insults, name-calling and hatred. We are being trained to self censor. Censorship is viewed as a virtue and there is no debate of ideas. Without debate, we will make irrational decisions that can doom our civilization to failure.”

Concealing facts about Islamists tends to be the genre of today’s so-called journalism. How many people, for example, know the fact that nearly 10,000 Jews left the Gaza Strip in in 2006, for the sake of peace only to be taken over by the Iranian-backed Hamas? Or how the BBC Newsnight claimed that “dancing Israelis at the Western Wall were in celebratory mood after seeing, what they thought was the Al Aqsa Mosque on fire.”

The truth of the matter was Palestinians who were rioting on the Temple Mount, set a large tree on fire, after a firework aimed at the police, missed its target. The “dancing Israelis” was the “celebratory mood” of Yom Yerushalayim.

Regarding the aforementioned terrorist acts against the peaceful Hazara Shi’ite community, as I explain in my book Islam: Religion of Peace? – The Violation of Natural Rights and Western Cover-Up, that fact that Shi’ites are seen as heretics by the mainline Sunni Muslims, and vice-versa, such barbarous attacks are justified under Islamic law. Lawmakers may talk about such conflicts, as those in Afghanistan or Burkina Faso, but they will just about altogether avoid discussing the religious motivations to them.

Why is this never discussed? How come Islamic apologists never discuss the texts jihadists quote to justify their criminal behavior, arguing that it is not true Islam? It this a “cover-up” strategy? It seems to be the case. And it certainly does not help anyone, regardless of religious affiliation, who wishes to live in freedom.

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Mario Alexis Portella is a priest of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore and Chancellor of the Archdiocese of Florence, Italy. He has a doctorate in canon law and civil law from the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome; he also holds a M. A. in Medieval History from Fordham University, as well as a B.A. in Government & Politics from St. John’s University. He is also author of Islam: Religion of Peace? – The Violation of Natural Rights and Western Cover-Up.

Book available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or WestBow Press.