Bomb Blast Today at Zanzibar Anglican Cathedral – Just the Latest Jihadi Attack in Tanzania

From our friend, George Conger journalist at Anglican Ink and Conger: “Two bombs were detonated on the precincts of Christ Church Cathedral in Zanzibar today in the latest of a series of attacks on Christians on the East African archipelago. On 24 February 2014 two explosions rocked the main entrance to Christ Church Cathedral and the Old Slave Market – the island’s largest tourist attraction. The Vicar General of Zanzibar tells Anglican Ink there were no fatalities in the blast.”

Journalist Conger, who along with Kevin Kallsen, brings a video newscast from the global Anglican Communion, reported that the Vicar General informed him that police were investigating the situation and had swept the Cathedral compound. “We are assessing the situation, in contact with multiple agencies and Western government officials, ” he said. He also reported that the British Consul “was on site almost immediately and a tremendous help” to those who had been shaken by the attack. Conger continues:

Today’s bomb attack on Christ Church Cathedral comes amidst the reconstruction of the coral stone Gothic cathedral. Founded in 1873 on the site of Zanzibar’s old slave market, with the altar located on the spot of the slave market’s whipping post, the church was consecrated in 1903. In October 2013 the EU awarded a grant to the cathedral to build a heritage and education center on the cathedral’s precincts to commemorate the abolition of slavery. The EU grant to the cathedral had been given to foster interfaith relations between the majority Muslim population and the Christian minority.

The bombing of beautiful Christ Church Cathedral is just the latest in a series of attacks by Islamist supremacists in a jihad against Christians in Tanzania. In September, Islamists were responsible for a horrific, disfiguring acid attack on a Catholic priest in Zanzibar. A month earlier, two British girls had been similarly attacked. Conger also reported on an Islamist attack on Christ Church Cathedral in October 2012.

The country’s overall population is majority Christian (29.5 million out of 47.7 million total), but the population of the Zanzibar archipelago is overwhelmingly Muslim (almost 99 per cent). Islamists of the Association for Islamic Mobilization and Propagation (UAMSHO) want to create a new Islamic state on Zanzibar, but it has not prevented them from attacking Christians in the majority Christian areas of the country, as well.

In January, I wrote about the murder of the youth leader at the Gilgal Christian Worship Center in Tanzania’s Mwanza region on the southern shore of Lake Victoria.  Elias Lunyamila Meshack, 35, was hacked to death by Islamists who attacked while he was leading an all-night worship service in October 2013.

Because of the increase in persecution of Christians in recent years and because of the Islamist agenda for Zanzibar, Tanzania is one of Open Door’s fifty 2014 World Watch List countries with a rating of “moderate persecution.” The 2014 placement for the country is 49 out of 50, a vast improvement from 2013’s very alarming placement of 24. Open Doors warned, though, when the ratings were released, that the improvements may not last:

Currently, a constitutional review process –which includes the position of Islam in Tanzania, is underway. Within this context, it is not sure if the Tanzanian church sufficiently realizes that the observed dip in Christian persecution (in comparison to last year) could very well be of a temporary nature, and could easily intensify if the current constitutional review process fails (to achieve the Islamist’s desired ends).

Christian freedom organizations are concerned about pressure on the Tanzanian government from Islamists to somehow enshrine Islam in the constitution, the review of which is to be completed by the end of 2014. But some news reports are more hopeful for religious freedom. According to the Global Post Rights, “one thing nearly everyone in Tanzania agrees on is that religion should have little or nothing to do with the constitutional process.” The GP Rights goes on to say that the proposed constitution, “broadly guarantees ‘freedom of worship’ and states that ‘the government has no religion or religious affiliation.'”  Those two statements are the only mentions of religion in the entire 130-page, 240-article document.

If the review process continues to move in this direction, and maintains a secular constitution, it will result in a healthy state of religious freedom for Tanzania. But it is a deadly catch-22, because a renewed dedication to religious freedom could well incite more violence against Tanzanian Christians by UAMSHO and others radicals demanding Islamist supremacism.