In the past six weeks, many places of religious worship have been targeted in a series of vicious and violent attacks, including shootings and bombings. On Saturday, April 27, a gunman opened fire in a synagogue in Poway, California (on the outskirts of San Diego), killing one woman and wounding three others. The gunman, who was in possession of an AR type assault weapon, made shots at people as they entered the building for a Passover service and celebration. The shooting is the latest in a series of deadly attacks made on different places of worship around the world. After the shooting, the gunman fled the scene but later revealed his location to police and surrendered to a K-9 officer without a struggle. The mayor of Poway claims the attack was a hate crime based on words said by the shooter upon entering the synagogue.

Only a few days before the Poway shooting, a series of coordinated attacks involving multiple suicide bombers rocked a church community on Easter Sunday in Sri Lanka. As many Christians were celebrating Easter within the walls of different Sri Lankan churches and hotels, a series of explosions went off, killing 253 people. So far, dozens of people have been arrested in connection to the attacks as a part of a multinational wide-spanning investigation. National Tawheed Jamath, a local extremist group, has been blamed for the attacks although they have not accepted responsibility. ISIS claimed responsibility on Tuesday, April 23, yet they offer no evidence in support of this claim and no link between ISIS and the Sri Lankan extremist group has been discovered.  

Last month, 50 people were slain in an attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. The shooter, who opened fire in al Noor Mosque and Linwood Mosque, livestream the attack on social media. Prior to the shootings, the perpetrator published an 87 page manifesto on Twitter and 8chan, a forum where people anonymously share extremist messages and celebrate evil perpetrators of violent attacks. The New Zealand prime minister has refused to publicly state the name of the shooter with the intention of not giving him the fame he was after.

Although these attacks have been carried out on many different houses of worship around the world, the Council on American Islamic Relations stated that they have stemmed from the exact same type of hate and prejudice. “Violence comes in many different forms, but hate has the same DNA wherever you see it: whether in the form of ISIS, white supremacy, or genocide, it is the belief that another group is an existential threat to you and your community that often justifies the most unspeakable acts of violence and brutality,” said Abbas Barzegar, director of research and advocacy for CAIR. These different instances of hate crimes spanning across the country are evidence of rising levels of tension. Hatred toward different religious communities and groups is on the rise, and these attacks are only growing in number and extremity. If we do not act quickly to put a stop to attacks such as these, the hate we are seeing in the world will only intensify.