The real secret to defeating radical Islam
I'm looking at a photograph of a beautiful young Christian girl who has just been beheaded by a gang of six rampaging, machete-wielding Muslim radicals.
Her bloody body is lying on an autopsy table. A few inches to the left of her torso lies her severed head, nestled in a bunched-up black plastic trash bag. Delicate features, lovely dark hair matted with blood, eyes closed, her face appears sad and almost serene, prompting one to reflect on the incomprehensible brutality and terror she must have experienced.
Two other teenage girls, both Christian, were also decapitated during the same Oct. 29 massacre on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. The Muslim men, all dressed in black, savagely attacked the 16- to 19-year-old girls with machetes as they walked across a cocoa plantation on their way to the private Christian school they attended. Their heads were found some distance from the bodies, the head of one girl discarded mockingly in front of a Christian church.
Islamic attacks on Christians, including May's bombing in the nearby, predominantly Christian town of Tentena that killed 22 and injured over 30, are common in this area – with over 40 local attacks in the last two-and-a-half years. Analysts say Muslim militants are targeting central Sulawesi because they see it as a likely foundation for an Islamic state.