As Christians peacefully celebrated the Easter holiday throughout the West, their coreligionists throughout the Muslim world were under assault—with many killed.
Nigeria saw the heaviest bloodshed. On Palm Sunday, which kicks off the Holy Week of Easter, Muslim gunmen murdered dozens of Christians across Plateau State, including at least 30 in Ungwan Rukuba. On Easter Sunday, Muslim terrorists stormed two churches in Kaduna State, killing at least seven worshippers and abducting several others. That same Easter Sunday in Benue State, Muslims killed at least 17 Christians and torched their homes. The night before Easter, terrorists raided Borno State, burning a church and multiple homes.
In Pakistan, a Muslim deliberately rammed his cargo truck into a Christian sunrise procession, killing one worshipper and injuring more than 60 others, many critically.
In Syria, church leaders cancelled all public Easter festivities after armed Muslims attacked the Christian town of al-Suqaylabiyah, firing guns and vandalizing a Virgin Mary shrine.
Even in “moderate” Indonesia, following pressure from local Muslim clerics and residents, authorities forcibly closed a church in Teluknaga right after Good Friday services, preventing its congregation from worshipping on Easter Sunday.
Meanwhile, ISIS fanned the flames by calling on Muslims worldwide to burn churches and synagogues across the US, Europe, and elsewhere during the Easter weekend. As with Christmas 2025, European security services took extreme and intrusive measures in preparation. That said, and as usual, countless churches were desecrated or burned, Christian statues beheaded, and crosses broken—all hallmarks of jihadist sentiment—throughout the year.
Anyone shocked by the aforementioned accounts of Easter-related terrorism must surely be doubly shocked to learn that every Easter sees the same sort of savagery and bloodshed.
In 2014 in Nigeria, a church was burned down on Easter Sunday, killing 150 Christians; another church was bombed on Easter Sunday, 2012, leaving some 50 worshippers dead; Muslim herdsmen launched a series of raids during Easter week, 2013, killing at least 80 Christians—mostly children and the elderly; over 200 Christian homes were destroyed, eight churches burned, and 4,500 Christians displaced.
On Easter Sunday, 2016, in Pakistan, an Islamic suicide bombing took place near the children rides of a public park, where Christians were known to be congregated and celebrating. Some 70 people—mostly women and children—were killed and nearly 400 injured. Something similar was in store for Pakistan on the following year, 2017, as officials foiled a “major terrorist attack” targeting Christians on Easter Sunday.
On Palm Sunday, March 28, 2021, in Indonesia, a Muslim couple launched a suicide attack on Sacred Heart Cathedral during Palm Sunday service in Makassar. Denied entry, the two suicide bombers detonated themselves near the building’s entrance, leaving approximately 20 churchgoers injured. Had they managed to enter the cathedral, which was packed with worshippers, the death rate is estimated to have been in the dozens. The female suicide bomber was four months pregnant.
Incidentally, lest it seem that Nigeria, Pakistan, and Indonesia are the only nations where Muslims are savaging Christians during Easter, here are some examples from yet another Muslim nation—Egypt: in 2017, two Coptic Christian churches were bombed during Palm Sunday mass, leaving nearly 50 dead and 120 injured. Two days later, authorities thwarted another Islamic terror attack targeting a Coptic monastery in Upper Egypt.
On April 12, 2015, Easter Sunday, two explosions targeting two separate churches took place in Egypt. Although no casualties were reported, large numbers could easily have resulted, based on precedent (for example, on January 1, 2011, as Egypt’s Christians ushered in the New Year—another Christian holiday for Orthodox communities—car bombs went off near the Two Saints Church in Alexandria, resulting in 23 dead worshippers and dozens critically injured).
After 45 years of waiting, the Christians of Nag Shenouda finally got a permit to build a church; local Muslims responded by rioting and burned down the temporary tent the Copts had erected to worship under. Denied, the Christians of Nag Shenouda celebrated Easter in the street, to Muslims’ jeers and sneers.
Even in nations one normally doesn’t associate with Islamic terrorism, Easter brings out the worse. In Sri Lanka, on Easter Sunday, April 21, 2019, Islamic terrorists carried out a series of suicide bombings targeting Christians; 269 people were killed and more than 500 wounded. Eight explosions occurred in total, with the deadliest attacks striking three churches during Easter services: St. Sebastian’s Church in Negombo, where over 100 worshippers (including many children) were killed; St. Anthony’s Shrine in Colombo, where 50–56 where killed; and Zion Church in Batticaloa, where 30–38 were lives.
More examples follow:
Kenya: The day before Good Friday, 2015, Muslim terrorists raided a university and massacred 147. Not only did they try to distinguish between Muslim and Christian students in order to kill only the latter, but they taunted those whom they slaughtered by mockingly saying things like “This will be a good Easter holiday for us.”
Bangladesh: In 2015, Muslims attacked a Catholic village as it celebrated Easter; they stabbed its priest, destroyed Bibles, crosses, holy pictures, musical instruments and homes—before turning their ire on and slaughtering goats and chickens.
Turkey: In 2012, a pastor was beaten by Muslims immediately following Easter service and threatened with death unless he converted to Islam.
Iran: Easter Sunday, 2012, saw 12 Christians stand trial as “apostates.” In 2014, authorities raided an Easter service in a house-church, arresting and hauling off all those in attendance; and in 2015, various churches were banned from celebrating Easter Sunday altogether.
Syria: On Easter Sunday, 2015, the Islamic State destroyed the Virgin Mary Church in Tel Nasri, an ancient Christian region. After Islamic rebels fired rockets at a Christian neighborhood right before that same Easter, 2015, killing approximately 40, a woman lamented how “Our Easter feast has turned to grief.”
Iraq: In 2013, according to an AP report, “Iraq’s Catholic Christians flocked to churches to celebrate Easter Sunday, praying, singing and rejoicing in the resurrection of Christ”—but only “behind high blast walls and tight security cordons.”
Europe, too, has seen much Muslim madness during Easter over the years. According to one report, “the terror cell that struck in Brussels [in March, 2016, killing 34] was planning to massacre worshippers at Easter church services across Europe, including Britain.”
In Scotland, 2016, a Muslim man stabbed another Muslim man to death for wishing Christians a Good Friday and Happy Easter.
And if an al-Qaeda terror plot targeting Easter shoppers in the UK was not thwarted “it would almost certainly have been Britain’s worst terrorist attack, with the potential to cause more deaths than the suicide attacks of July 7, 2005, when 52 people were murdered.”
So much for establishing that there is an uptick of Muslim violence—including of the lethal variety—against Christians during the Easter season.
The question now is, why?
The full explanation—why Easter provokes such predictable, lethal attacks and what it reveals about the clash of civilizations—continues below for paid subscribers.
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