After 51 Muslims were murdered in Christchurch, the UN established an international day against Islamophobia. Jihadists have murdered thousands more, including Muslims, yet there is no equivalent day dedicated to combating jihadism.

On March 15, 2019, a white supremacist murdered 51 Muslims praying at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Three years later, the United Nations General Assembly designated March 15 the International Day to Combat Islamophobia. Pakistan introduced the resolution on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and the General Assembly adopted it by consensus.

Consider the terrorist atrocities of recent decades:

• On September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda murdered 2,977 people in the United States.
• Jemaah Islamiyah murdered 202 in Bali in 2002.
• Islamist terrorists killed 193 commuters aboard Madrid trains in 2004.
• Lashkar-e-Taiba murdered 166 people in Mumbai in 2008, including six Jews at the Chabad House.
• In 2014, ISIS massacred approximately 1,700 Iraqi military cadets at Camp Speicher.
• That same year, the Pakistani Taliban murdered 149 people, including 132 schoolchildren, at a school in Peshawar.
• In 2015, al-Shabaab murdered 148 people at Kenya’s Garissa University, separating Christian students from Muslims before killing them.
• Months later, ISIS murdered 130 people across Paris.
• In 2019, Islamist suicide bombers murdered approximately 269 people at churches and hotels in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday.
• On October 7, 2023, Hamas-led terrorists murdered approximately 1,200 people in Israel, including families in their homes and young people attending a music festival.

These were different countries and different jihadist movements. The victims included Muslims, Christians, Jews and of other backgrounds. Every attack killed more people than Christchurch, sometimes by orders of magnitude.

The United Nations has established annual observances for victims of terrorism generally, on August 21, and victims of religious violence, on August 22. None of these massacres has its own comparable UN international day tied to its anniversary.

Yet Christchurch received something these other massacres did not: a permanent place on the UN calendar dedicated to combating the hatred behind the attack.

The contrast is especially striking because jihadists have slaughtered so many fellow Muslims. The victims at Camp Speicher and Peshawar were overwhelmingly Muslim. ISIS, al-Qaeda, the Taliban and their ideological counterparts have terrorized Muslim populations for decades, murdering those who resisted their demands for religious submission.

The UN created an International Day to Combat Islamophobia. It is long past time for an International Day to Combat Jihadism. Its victims include the very Muslims the UN claims to protect.