The teenage perpetrator of this week’s brazen anti-Christian attack on an Assyrian Bishop during Mass at a church in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia, faced a judge on Friday after police charged him a day earlier with “committing a terrorist act.”
Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel had been delivering a live-streamed sermon at Christ the Good Shepherd Church on Monday evening when, out of nowhere, the 16-year-old attacker approached the altar, pulled out a knife, and began repeatedly and mercilessly stabbing him, targeting the bishop’s face and head to inflict maximum damage.
According to an eyewitness interviewed by an Australian video journalist at the scene of the attack, the assailant shouted “Allahu Akbar” repeatedly and muttered in Arabic about the Islamic prophet being insulted as faithful churchgoers intervened, tackling him to the ground and subduing him.
Notably, after video of the attack began circulating across social networks, Australia’s eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant ordered Meta and X to remove the content within twenty-four hours and threatened to impose massive fines if they failed to do so.
Several mainstream press outlets in Australia and New Zealand, including major ones like 7NEWS Australia, The Sydney Morning Herald, 9News, and 1News have reported on the attack and the perpetrator’s hearing, noting that it was “declared a terrorist act because of the teen’s possible religious motivation.”
What the outlets failed to mention, purposely or not, is the particular religion that appears to have motivated the attack: Islam.
Instead, The Sydney Morning Herald in its reporting emphasized—as mainstream press organs across the West often do in Islamist-inspired attacks—the perpetrator’s alleged history of mental health problems.
While the teen has no documented history of mental illness, he does have a rather extensive criminal record. In January, the 16-year-old was convicted of a catalog of criminal offenses, including possession of a switchblade knife, carrying a weapon with intent to commit a crime, stalking, intimidation, and property damage, according to media reports.
Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel, who according to Fr. Daniel Kochou of Christ the Good Shepherd Church suffered “non-life threatening injuries,” commented on the attack from the hospital on Thursday, saying that he had forgiven the young attacker.
“I forgive whoever has done this act. And I say to him, you are my son, I love you and I will always pray for you. And whoever sent you to do this, I forgive them as well,” the bishop said.
The Iraqi-born Assyrian Orthodox prelate also addressed the group that gathered and rioted outside of the church in response to the attack and called on others thinking of taking retaliatory actions to refrain from doing so.
“I need you to act Christ-like. The Lord Jesus never said to go out and fight in the street, never said to retaliate, but to pray. And this is what I’m asking everyone to do,” Emmanuel said.
The 16-year-old boy is due to appear in court next in June. The charge he faces carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.
