Fear and faith mingle after attacks in Paris and Beirut

The Sunday after the worst terrorist attacks in European history left at least 129 dead and 352 wounded in Paris, people packed into churches that are normally empty, lit candles at the sites of the attacks, and gathered in public plazas even though a state of emergency forbid doing so.

A day before the attacks in Paris, on November 12, a double suicide bombing outside a Shi‘ite meeting hall in Beirut killed at least 43 people and injured more than 230. The Lebanese Shi‘ite group Hezbollah has supported Syria’s regime, which is fighting a mainly Sunni Muslim armed opposition. Hezbollah’s rule has divided Lebanon.

The self-described Islamic State claimed responsibility for the violence, calling the Paris attacks “the first of the storm,” and describing the Beirut bombings in a statement: “Soldiers of the caliphate blew themselves up in the stronghold of the heretics, and after the apostates crowded around the site of the explosion a second martyr blew himself up using his explosive belt.”