Ihsan

And...

Salaam Alaikum -

some critical and alternative perspectives of our present day situation - (excerpts below, click on the name of the author to read full article).

George Galloway

What our leaders want is liberty for us, but only up to a point, and they're ready to take that away if it suits them, but no liberty for anybody else. And the people in the Muslim world can see it very clearly. They know that nobody gave a toss about the thousands who were killed in Fallujah. Nobody in the British Parliament raised any qualm about the American armed forces reducing Fallujah to ash and killing thousands of people. Yet, they go into the kind of emoting that we saw yesterday about the deaths in London.

I'm different from that, and most British people are different from that, when you reach them. The blood of everyone is worth the same. God didn't differentiate between a dead person in London killed by sheets of flying glass and red-hot razor sharp steel and someone who died the same death in Baghdad. These deaths are the same. And war of the kind that we have seen -- unjustified, illegal, based on lies, in Iraq, is terrorism of a different kind. Just because the President, who ordered it is wearing a smart suit rather than the garb of an Islamist in the Tora Bora doesn't make their orders more legitimate than orders if they were given from bin Laden.

Imam Zaid Shakir writes:

The recent terrorist tragedy in London is disheartening. Once again some nefarious force has seen fit to totally disregard innocent human life in pursuit of a vile agenda that few of us know and even fewer could understand.

The response of the world leaders assembled in Edinburgh for the G-8 Summit is perhaps more disheartening, as it promises more of the misguided policies that have proven so ineffective in prosecuting the war on terror. The leaders of the Western powers continue to imply that they will fight violence with more violence of their own. If current events are any indicator of future developments, such a policy will only serve to beget yet more terrorism.

Robert Fisk writes:

"It is easy for Tony Blair to call yesterdays bombings "barbaric" - of course they were - but what were the civilian deaths of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003, the children torn apart by cluster bombs, the countless innocent Iraqis gunned down at American military checkpoints? When they die, it is "collateral damage"; when "we" die, it is "barbaric terrorism""

Abbas Khadim writes:

The London terrorist attacks turned July 7th into another shameful moment in the history of humanity.

What is equally shameful is that the world displays the right feelings and re-acts in the right way only when the tragedy hits certain areas but not some others. What happened in London is a great tragedy, there is no doubt about it, and the world's dismay and outrage is proportionate, to say the least. But this is exactly what Iraqis suffer almost every day for the past two and half years. Only there is no such outrage about it.

Our prayers for the victims of these acts of terror and for their families. And our continuous prayers for the Iraqis whose pain is much less lamented, even by their so-called Arab brothers.

Abu Sinan writes:

The response to the recent bombings in London have been a bit odd in places. How can one be ashamed of their religion based on the actions of some lunatics? Were Christians ashamed when their co-religionists murdered 10,000 Muslims in Sbrenecia? Were Christians ashamed to be Christian when 1,000,000 Ugandans have been killed by radical Christians seeking to impose their version of Christianity on that country?
.....

I think some Muslims and Arabs all too easily fall to their knees in self loathing because they think this will somehow make them acceptable to the West. It wont, at the end of the day you are still a rag head, still a devil worshipper, and prone to violence. Sure, they have some of the people they call the "good Arabs" or the Muslims that are okay because they "aren't really Muslim" because they don't practice their faith. At the end of the day these people are nothing more than what we would call here in the USA an "Uncle Tom" or a "House Nigger." When push comes to shove you will be put into the same lot as the rest of your Arab and Muslim brothers and sisters. Don't delude yourself otherwise.

MPACUK writes:

You have just seen the extreme response.

The question the Muslim ‘body’ must ask itself is why the hell did the immune system not respond? Why have the Mosques failed to teach the Muslim community the fard of Political Jihad, a peaceful Jihad that could have stopped an unjust foreign policy? Instead of irrelevant khutbas pacifying the community and allowing extremist elements to target those that have lost confidence in our mainstream Islamic institutions. By refusing to teach Muslims to change the world peacefully, the mosque leaders are directly accountable in shrugging off their responsibility to their community, allowing the world to be changed by those who use force, both those who took us to war, and now those who are planting bombs in retaliation.

These are tough questions but they must be asked.

Tariq Ali writes:

Ever since 9/11, I have been arguing that the "war against terror" is immoral and counterproductive. It sanctions the use of state terror - bombing raids, torture, countless civilian deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq - against Islamo-anarchists whose numbers are small, but whose reach is deadly. The solution then, as now, is political, not military. The British ruling elite understood this perfectly well in the case of Ireland. Security measures, anti-terror laws rushed through parliament, identity cards, a curtailment of civil liberties, will not solve the problem. If anything, they will push young Muslims in the direction of mindless violence.

The real solution lies in immediately ending the occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine. Just because these three wars are reported sporadically and mean little to the everyday lives of most Europeans does not mean the anger and bitterness they arouse in the Muslim world and its diaspora is insignificant. As long as western politicians wage their wars and their colleagues in the Muslim world watch in silence, young people will be attracted to the groups who carry out random acts of revenge.

Yamin Zakaria writes:

“God didn't call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war ... We've committed more war crimes almost than any nation in the world.” (Martin Luther King, Jr.)

First, it (“Shock and Awe”) was displayed in Baghdad, and in response it was seen in Madrid and Istanbul; now it has come to London but on a far smaller scale. It seems we live in a world where the Anglo-Saxon civilisation, assumes the right to unleash their military forces on anyone, but expects everyone to howl terrorism, give minutes of silence, and stand shoulder-to-shoulder, when they face retaliation.

As expected everyone is howling and describing it as barbaric, an act of terrorism, attack on humanity etc. because the bombs were detonated in London not in Baghdad or Kabul! Otherwise I would have expected the same response for the 54 people killed in the wedding party in Iraq and many similar incidences throughout Iraq and Afghanistan.

posted by redwood at 7/09/2005 05:46:00 PM