A small step

[Highland 0]

Source

 

Muslims' painful truth

 

The main perpetrators of terrorism are Muslims, says leading Arab writer

 

CAIRO

 

IMAGES of dead, wounded and traumatised Russian children being carried from the scene of a school siege horrified Middle-Eastern Muslims, prompting forthright self-criticism yesterday.

 

It also sparked fresh concerns about an international backlash against Islam and its followers.

 

Arab leaders, Muslim clerics and parents across the Middle East denounced the school siege that left more than 320 people dead, many of them children, as unjustifiable.

 

Some warned that such actions damage Islam's image more than all its enemies could hope for. Even some supporters of Islamic militancy condemned it, though at least one insisted Muslims were not behind it.

 

'Holy warriors' from the Middle East have long supported fellow Muslims fighting in Chechnya, and Russian officials said nine or 10 Arabs were among militants killed when commandos stormed the Beslan school in southern Russia on Friday to end a siege that began on Wednesday by rebels demanding Chechen independence.

 

Middle East security officials, speaking on condition of anony- mity, said it was too early to know the nationalities of the Arabs among the dead militants. However, a prominent Arab journalist wrote that Muslims must acknowledge the painful fact that Muslims are the main perpetrators of terrorism.

 

'Our terrorist sons are an end-product of our corrupted culture,' Mr Abdulrahman Al-Rashed, general manager of Al-Arabiya television, wrote in his daily column published in the pan-Arab Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper.

 

It ran under the headline, The Painful Truth: All the World Terrorists are Muslims!

 

Mr Rashed ran through a list of recent attacks by Islamic extremist groups - in Russia, Iraq, Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen - many of which are influenced by the ideology of Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born leader of Al-Qaeda terror network.

 

'Most perpetrators of suicide operations in buses, schools and residential buildings around the world for the past 10 years have been Muslims,' he wrote.

 

Muslims will be unable to cleanse their image unless 'we admit the scandalous facts', rather than offer condemnations or justifications.

 

'The picture is humiliating, painful and harsh for all of us,' he said.

 

Arab TV stations repeatedly aired footage of terrified young survivors being carried from the school siege scene, while pictures of dead and wounded children ran on the front pages of Saturday's Arab newspapers.

 

Mr Ahmed Bahgat, an Egyptian Islamist, wrote in his column in Egypt's leading pro-government newspaper Al-Ahram that the images 'showed Muslims as monsters who are fed by the blood of children and the pain of their families'.

 

'If all the enemies of Islam united together and decided to harm it... they wouldn't have ruined and harmed its image as much as the sons of Islam have done by their stupidity, miscalculations and misunderstanding of the nature of this age,' Mr Bahgat wrote.

 

Other Islamists were more cautious in their criticism.

 

Mohammed Mahdi Akef, leader of Egypt's largest Islamic group, the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, said the siege did not fit the Islamic concept of jihad, or holy war, but took care not to characterise it as terrorism.

 

'What happened...is not jihad because our Islam obligates us to respect the souls of human beings,' he said. 'Real jihad should target occupiers of our lands only like the Palestinian and Iraqi resistance.'

 

Mr Ali Abdullah, an Islamic scholar in Bahrain who follows the ultra-conservative Salafi stream of Islam, condemned the school attack as 'un-Islamic' but insisted Muslims were not behind it.

 

'I have no doubt in my mind that this is the work of the Israelis who want to tarnish the image of Muslims and are working alongside Russians who have their own agenda against the Muslims in Chechnya,' said Mr Abdullah, reviving an old conspiracy theory altered to fit any situation.

 

Salafism and its similarly conservative kin, Wahhabism, which is widely observed in Saudi Arabia, are accused by critics of fostering extremism.

 

Some contributors to Islamic websites known for their extremist content praised the separatists and predicted that the Islamic fighters across Egypt would avenge the killings of Muslims elsewhere.

 

Heads of state from around the region condemned the attack. It struck a chord with parents, including Jordan's King Abdullah II, who denounced it on state-run television.

 

'As a father, I can tell you that all the fathers and mothers in Jordan pray humbly to God to stand by their counterparts in Russia in their grief,' said the king, whose wife is expecting their fourth child.

 

Mr Mohammed Saleh Ebrahim, a 31-year-old Bahraini, described the hostage-takers as 'worse than animals'.

 

'It's because of these people Muslims and Arabs are getting a bad name around the world,' he said. -- AP

 

He's right, and it would be good for all of us if more spoke out like this editorialist is, instead of keeping silent.

[Vyce 0]

He's right, and it would be good for all of us if more spoke out like this editorialist is, instead of keeping silent.

Yes, but sadly, for every one of this individual, there are about a thousand of these:

 

Mr Ali Abdullah, an Islamic scholar in Bahrain who follows the ultra-conservative Salafi stream of Islam, condemned the school attack as 'un-Islamic' but insisted Muslims were not behind it.

 

'I have no doubt in my mind that this is the work of the Israelis who want to tarnish the image of Muslims and are working alongside Russians who have their own agenda against the Muslims in Chechnya,' said Mr Abdullah, reviving an old conspiracy theory altered to fit any situation.

[Styles 0]

'What happened...is not jihad because our Islam obligates us to respect the souls of human beings,' he said. 'Real jihad should target occupiers of our lands only like the Palestinian and Iraqi resistance.'

 

'I have no doubt in my mind that this is the work of the Israelis who want to tarnish the image of Muslims and are working alongside Russians who have their own agenda against the Muslims in Chechnya,' said Mr Abdullah, reviving an old conspiracy theory altered to fit any situation.

 

Fuck them.

[Guest Riots bloodlust]

Now if only there had been such slivers of self inspection after the horrors of 9/11, then I might have some respect for it. As it is, it still shows a double standard. No problem with 9/11, because America is the "Great Satan"... or whatever. I find it equally as disgusting that the Muslim world could find this disgusting, yet dance in the streets when America is attacked. Give me someone really vocal, and with authority, calling out for reform and understanding and a stop to Islamic terrorism, then I may think it holds some water. As it is, I see it as mostly displaying more hatred and bigotry on their part against the United States and Israel, and Christianity, and France, who doesn't want religious wear in schools to help stem the rapes and beatings from Muslim youths against girls...

 

Damn, makes me so pissed off I can hardly see straight.

 

Islam needs a Martin Luther.

 

(I could probably have phrased that better, but it pisses me off too much to think about any more)

[Jobber of the Week 0]

It ran under the headline, The Painful Truth: All the World Terrorists are Muslims!

*BUZZER* Ooh, I'm sorry, that was close but not quite.

[Guest CronoT]

The problem with leaders trying to make real change, is that their own people who are on the extreme fringe will target them. A deceased former Prime Minister of Egypt was killed by an ultra-nationalist Islamic militant when he advocated peace with Israel. Also, an Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netenyahou, I believe, was killed by an extremist Israeli militant for trying to bring about peace between Palestinian refugee groups and Israel.

 

As long as people like ths exist, this world will never know true peace.

[teke184 0]

The problem with leaders trying to make real change, is that their own people who are on the extreme fringe will target them. A deceased former Prime Minister of Egypt was killed by an ultra-nationalist Islamic militant when he advocated peace with Israel. Also, an Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netenyahou, I believe, was killed by an extremist Israeli militant for trying to bring about peace between Palestinian refugee groups and Israel.

 

As long as people like ths exist, this world will never know true peace.

It was Itzack Rabin (spelling incorrect), but Netenyahu was probably his successor. Right on with the point, though.

 

 

What I'm finding funny is the whole "Only Nixon could go to China" thing that Ariel Sharon has going on. Only a guy who has had his long-term far-right positions on the conflict with the Palestinians could advocate a pull-out from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.