Posted on 07/15/2005 3:36:16 AM PDT by milestogo
West is to blame for bombers, say mullahs
By Peter Foster
(Filed: 15/07/2005)
In the spartan office of one of the largest Islamic schools in Lahore, the mullah delivered without hesitation an answer to the question that has been troubling Britain since the bombings: how did four young, British-born men turn into suicide bombers?
Mullah Fazl-ur-Rahim, the head of the Jamia Ashrafia in the Pakistani city, said: "It is injustice that is the source of all conflict. We condemn such attacks unreservedly but the West - and Mr Tony Blair and the people of Britain - must ask themselves honestly about the reasons for it."
The news that one of the bombers, 22-year-old Shehzad Tanweer, spent three months in Lahore at the end of last year, studying in an Islamic school, or madrassa, fails to deflect Mullah Rahim.
"Show me a single madrassa that teaches students how to use a Kalashnikov or strap bombs to themselves," he said. "You cannot, because they do not exist."
For Mullah Rahim this is a clinching argument against anyone suggesting that Pakistan's madrassas are a seed-bed for the violent, anti--western ideologies that motivate young men such as the London bombers.
His establishment, which has an English-language brochure to attract foreign students, appears to be among the more moderate of Pakistan's 20,000 Islamic schools.
He is proud to display a library with four computers and 30,000 religious books for the use of students whose ages range from nine to 26.
All must learn the Koran by heart and the very best will master all 6,666 verses within six months, a feat that Mullah Rahim says is plainly a miracle, a gift from God.
However, even here it is accepted without debate that the West - and not the madrassa - is responsible for creating the conditions that lead to terrorist atrocities such as the London bombings.
For many in Pakistan it is a seductive argument. The notion that Tanweer could be sufficiently indoctrinated - or "brainwashed" as one of his family in Leeds described it - by a three-month visit to Lahore is dismissed.
Arif Jamal, a journalist from Lahore who has studied the madrassa phenomenon for five years, believes the West can win the war on terrorism only when it grasps that it is fighting a war of ideas, which Pakistan's madrassas are prosecuting vigorously.
"The fact that Shehzad Tanweer decided to go to Pakistan to take up an Islamic education indicates that he had already decided on which path he would take," he said.
"Perhaps what he heard in Pakistan might have reinforced those views, but ultimately the process of radicalisation and indoctrination must have begun at home.
"The madrassas are not like the al-Qa'eda training camps of old. You cannot attack them from the air or track them by satellite. They are idea factories, not bomb factories."
Another madrassa owner, Mullah Riaz Durrani, who is also leading spokesman for the Jamiah Ulema Islam (JUI), one of Pakistan's traditional Islamic political parties, said: "It is not speeches in madrassas that make these young men into suicide bombers.
"That job is done by the Americans and the British themselves, by Fox television and CNN, who broadcast the outrages of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay.
"Britain should ask itself why a young man from Leeds, educated in a British school, not a Pakistani madrassa, should decide to become a suicide bomber."
Such arguments, which find a receptive audience across Pakistan, are the more acceptable face of an extreme anti-westernism that permeates the traditional Islamic sections of Pakistani society.
Pakistan's president, Gen Pervaiz Musharraf, himself a victim of assassination attempts by Islamic militants, has advocated a course of "enlightened moderation" with the madrassas.
However, very few have taken up the offer to modernise a curriculum introduced in a Baghdad school in 1057.
And this month fresh attempts at reform - introducing maths, science and computing - were rejected at a major conference attended by Pakistan's minister for religious affairs.
They have chosen poorly.
Regards, Ivan
Like saying the Jews were responsible for the Holocaust.
The victims are guilty.
Let me paraphrase: The American MEDIA, which trumped up stories of abuse in order to damage the presidency of a sitting republican president, is to blame. Goebbels couldn't have done a better job. Congrats CNN. </sarcasm>
yeah, a different arm of the operation does THAT. the madrassa just prepares the heart.
Leahy, Kennedy, Biden, Durbin, Boxer, and others are the American traitors who betray this nation every time they accentuate and illuminate petty offenses at Abu Graib and other trivial offenses. American disgraces in the Senate.
Why do we keep letting them get away with this double-talk.
Does their holy book exhort them to make war against unbelievers, or not?
If it does, why should we listen to their reasons for blaming their victims. If it doesn't, why are they always predicating their attacks on religious grounds.
weird
Pakistan is an overflowing sewer of poisonous ideas.
....Show me a single madrassa that teaches students how to use a Kalashnikov or strap bombs to themselves," he said. "You cannot, because they do not exist.".....
Yeah, that's right. Their Mommy teaches them that before they go to school:
"Oh little Mohammad, you are so cute. Cochie coochie coo! You will grow up to be the most handsome suicide bomber! I'm so proud of you!"
This sounds like a challenge worthy of undertaking.
They used to make movies and tv shows where G-men were cool and the US President was a respected guy. Not anymore. If you see a CIA agent in a movie, keep your eye on him cause he's up to no good. This stuff goes out around the world and after a few decades it becomes "common knowledge" that we're a bunch of dangerous jerks.
And just what did India, Serbia, the Phillipines, and all the rest do to earn your ire?
Can we finally start calling a spade a spade and end the charade that we are at fault? Islam wants everyone on planet earth to be Islam. Nothing more, nothing less.
The same concept embraced by the left.
Brainwashing someone to chant 6,666 (what a peculiar number) in a language (arabic) that they don't understand one word of is no miracle, that's conditioning, otherwize known as brainwashing.
Oddly, that's all it takes to become a jr. Mullah, and is considered 'education' in the backward muslim world, not learning math, reading and writing, or how to tie your shoes. (which is why shoe's with laces are a rarity in some of the most backward isolated Islamic communities)
And after accomplishing that, you're still living in the 8th century amidst a million square miles of kitty litter and your camel is starting to look "pretty".
No. Sorry, you don't get to justify your murderous horde.
LoL! A quick glance through islamic 'scripture' reveals that muhammad was rather fond of his she-camels. So these 'devote' muslims, following Muhammad's example, don't think that there is anything wrong with that. After following them around in the desert all day, watching those swaying hips, and that tantilizing twitching of their tails...."AHMED! What are you doing to that camel?!!"
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