Correction

ISIS has now claimed responsibility for the Sri Lanka bombings, which makes much of what I wrote about them yesterday obsolete. It really was, then, done by Islamist terrorists.

But it also means the Sri Lankan government was wrong to blame the attacks on a local Muslim organization. In doing this the government may have been exploiting the affair to pursue their own agenda. Or they may only have been trying to cover for their own prior incompetence by being seen to take some swift action against someone.

This also does not speak well for either the intelligence or the abilities of ISIS. Supposedly, the church bombings were in retaliation for the Christchurch shootings in New Zealand. Yet the motive for the latter was not religious, and it is not clear that the shooter even identified as a Christian. He also does not appear to have been Sri Lankan, does he? And the point that the Western media does not care about Christians being bombed still holds.

The explanation may be that ISIS has grown so weak that they are now incapable of coming up with anything more relevant or compelling to the media. They needed some soft targets. They happened to have the assets in Sri Lanka, the churches had little security compared to any historic temples, and ISIS had nothing anywhere else.