Homegrown Dhaka attackers targeted foreigners, Bangladeshi elite


Saturday's deadly attack in Dhaka, Bangladesh, which left at least 28 people dead, was designed to target foreign nationals and the Bangladeshi elite.
The bakery and restaurant where the incident occurred is located in the capital city's diplomatic quarter, and local press reports suggest the terrorists sorted victims by nationality and religion. Three of the hostages who were killed were students at American universities.
Despite the Islamic State's claim of responsibility for the attack, Bangladeshi authorities say all seven of the gunmen were homegrown militants, members of an illegal Islamic fundamentalist group. "They are members of the Jamaeytul Mujahdeen Bangladesh," said Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan. "They have no connections with the Islamic State."
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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