Dear All,

The bomb attacks in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday reminded us all that perhaps the threat of the indoctrinated suicide bomber is never really going to go away -- that now we are always, anyone, anywhere -- at risk of being the target of these senseless attacks.

I say senseless because what is the sense in blowing yourself up in order to kill hundreds of civilians? And that too on a religious festival celebrating resurrection and hope. How can this possibly be done in the name of any religion?

Hundreds of families have been devastated by these attacks. At a funeral, a father sobbed as he told of losing his wife and children in one of the churches bombed. At one of the hotels that was targeted, visiting parents lost their children and a father lost his whole family, wife and children, as a bomber blew himself at the restaurant’s Sunday brunch. Almost 300 people have died in these bombings and around 500 are injured. Families have been broken, lives shattered.

The investigation is progressing quickly and investigators have said that the bombers (which include one woman) were educated, young people, who were from middle or upper-middle class backgrounds. These include two brothers, the sons of a wealthy Muslim spice merchant. When police investigators arrived at the family residence, the wife of one of the brothers (the spice merchant’s daughter-in-law) then triggered more explosives, killing herself, her children and two police officials. Why would educated, affluent, young people have done this? We still don’t know. But we have been here before: after the 9/11 bombings, almost two decades ago, we discovered the bombers had a similar profile and there was much questioning of what had motivated them.

Islamic State has called the bombers ‘their own’ but the main network seems to be one headed by a local radical preacher, one Zahran Hashim.

It’s been almost 18 years since the profile of the 9/11 bombers revealed that they too were young men from educated, relatively well-off backgrounds with no visibly religious tendencies or links. Almost two decades later and after all the devastation of the so-called ‘war on terror’ why is the same thing still happening?

The Easter bombings have been described as an act of retaliation for the Christchurch attacks in which a white supremacist killed 50 people in attacks on two mosques at Friday noon prayers (several Sri Lankan cricketers narrowly escaped harm in that attack). It is still unclear why an attack on Easter congregations and tourist heavy hotels should be considered retaliation for a white supremacist’s vicious shooting spree or be seen to have any sort of equivalence. Does this indicate that all of us are now caught up in the cross-fire between white supremacists and so-called Islamic militants? Is the whole world now a battleground for these lunatics? And why has the world been unable to contain these extremist forces?

The Easter bombings are a reminder of just how fragile the peace always is: as families and communities reel from the bloodshed and bereavement, countries are fearful that their multi-religious societies may now be a thing of the past. We have seen the resurgence of fascist movements and lynch mob tendencies all over the world and these have been fuelled by a variety of religious ideologies -- the Hindu Gau Rakshas in India or the extremist Buddhists in Myanmar or the so-called Islamic State group or the Christian white supremacists in the West, and their acts of violence occur with such regularity, they have become a part of life in the 21^st century.

We all now live in fear of the backlash. Whether we are going to the church, the mosque, the mandir, the synagogue or the gurdwara, or just going about our everyday lives, travelling to work or going shopping, whether we are young, brown men with beards and backpacks or children playing in a park, we are all targets and potential victims. How can we stem this epidemic of hate and violence? Why can’t we seem to get a grip on this?

Food for thought…

Best wishes,