The Muslim Coalition of Connecticut vigorously condemns the heinous car bomb attack on May 8, 2021 outside the Sayed Al-Shuhada School, Kabul, Afghanistan that left 85 dead and nearly 200 injured, most of them schoolchildren leaving school for the day. The Sayed Al-Shuhada School serves mostly impoverished children of the Shi’ite Hazara ethnic group, a religious and ethnic minority in Afghanistan. This attack was a crime against humanity.
As Muslims, we call for unity among all our Muslim brothers and sisters in opposing sectarian violence and the taking of any innocent life. We pray for all of the victims, and we ask God to provide the strength and patience needed by the victims’ families to bear this injustice.
Though any terror attack is unjust and forbidden in Islam in its harming of innocent people, this attack was especially reprehensible as it was intentionally aimed at schoolchildren, most of them young girls. The clear intent of the attack was to strike fear into the hearts of parents and children seeking education. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack but the opposition of the Taliban to female education and previous similar attacks by them to prevent female schooling is well-known. They have also repeatedly attacked the Hazaras.
As American Muslims, we strongly support the right of all people to gain an education and to live in safety and security. We call upon our Muslim brothers and sisters to stand up for the rights of all to be educated, to support education in places where this right is under attack, and to actively support the rights of ethnic and religious minorities.