Posted on 07/25/2005 11:33:21 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
The July 7 London bombings did it for me. Perhaps it was because my parents moved us from Cairo to the British capital when I was 7 years old, and so London was my childhood "home." Or maybe it was because our route to work and school every morning crisscrossed those same Underground stations that were targeted.
I'm sure it was also those dog-eared statements that our clerics and religious leaders read out telling us that Islam means peace — it actually means submission — and asking us to please forget everything they had ever said before July 6, because as of July 7 they truly believe violence is bad. Their backpedaling is so furious you can smell the skid marks.
Some are not even bothering to put their feet on the pedals, such as the 22 imams and scholars who met at London's largest mosque to condemn the bombings but who would not criticize all suicide attacks.
Sayed Mohammed Musawi, the head of the World Islamic League in London, insisted that "there should be a clear distinction between the suicide bombing of those who are trying to defend themselves from occupiers, which is something different from those who kill civilians, which is a big crime."
In a classic example of laying blame everywhere but at our own door, Musawi actually criticized the Western media (for supposedly confusing frustrated young Muslims) rather than those scholars who had blessed suicide bombings as long as they targeted Israelis.
Suicide bombings are the Muslim weapon of choice not only in London and Israel but in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. They are killing Muslims and non-Muslims alike, and yet our imams and scholars cannot condemn them.
As I said, the London bombings did it for me. Or maybe it's the knowledge that the more these faceless cowards strike, the more Muslim men in the West like my brother are pushed onto the stage of suspicion. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Ehab — who spends virtually all of his time caring for his cardiology patients or fulfilling his role as husband and father — was one of the 5,000 Muslim men questioned by the FBI; two years later he was among the thousands more who had to submit to being fingerprinted and photographed as part of a special registration.
But most of all, the London bombings rid me of all patience with the excuse that "George Bush (or Tony Blair or take your pick of Western leaders) made me do it." We don't know who was behind last week's explosions, but an Arab analyst told a satellite channel that if Tony Blair hadn't learned the mistake of the Iraq war, these new attacks were a firm reminder.
I never bought the explanation that U.S. foreign policy had "brought on" the Sept. 11 attacks, and I certainly don't buy the idea that the Iraq war is behind the attacks in London. Many people across the world have opposed U.S. and British foreign policy, but that doesn't mean they are rushing to fly planes into buildings or to blow up buses and Underground trains in London.
I was against the invasion of Iraq and would not have voted for George Bush if I were a U.S. citizen, but I'm done with the "George Bush made me do it" excuse. We must accept responsibility for this mess if we are ever to find a way out.
And for those non-Muslims who accept the George Bush excuse, I have a question: Do you think Muslims are incapable of accepting responsibility? It is racist — or at least in some way bigoted — to think that Muslims can only react violently.
There are a host of difficult questions we all must ask. How about beginning by acknowledging once and for all that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not a Muslim issue? It is a dispute over land that too many clerics and religious leaders, radical or otherwise, use to flesh out the victimized-Muslim scenario. Yes, Palestinians deserve a state, and, yes, Israel must end its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. But rather than dwelling endlessly on these issues, we would do well to spend some time encouraging our young people to become more active members of their communities and to not live caught between two worlds: a Muslim one at home and in the mosque, an "infidel" one outside.
And what about assimilation? It is not bigoted to ask Muslims if they are integrating into the societies they are living in. Just as the British government has responsibilities toward its citizens, immigrants included, so too do those immigrants. Muslims ask for time off work for prayer, for example, and they often get it. But are they truly living in Britain or are they perpetuating an existence that even their relatives "back home" long ago left behind? Domestic policy is too often ignored by many Muslims who are more concerned with Palestine, Iraq or any other place where Muslims are believed to have suffered injustice.
I raise these questions because London might have done it for me, but I'm not done with Islam. The clerics and the terrorists will not take it away from me. God belongs to me, too.
Eltahawy is a New York-based columnist for the pan-Arab Asharq al-Awsat. Her Web site is at www.monaeltahawy.com.
The terrorists are only interested in one thing
WORLD DOMINATION
You would think that the US being supposedly 90 % Christian that the blinders would come off but most people refuse to open their eyes or have been hiden from the light so long they dont know what truth is anymore.
The drip, drip, drip is becoming louder.
The Islamic jihadists already had their minds made up to strike and strike again against "soft" targets in the West, regardless of who was President of the US, or of overtures made by the Western capitals to appease the demands of the jihadists.
Bush is cited only because he chose to resist responding to these appeals for "peace", which are nothing less than piecemeal surrender.
The International Socialists used the same tactics in their quest for "world peace". Defined as conforming to the demands of the Comintern leadership, as failure to comply was evidence that the nations or individuals resisting were not interested in "peace".
Non-response to provocation is regarded as "surrender" in the eyes of the jihadists.
Hey lefties and assorted right-wing isolationists: Pull your heads out of your anal cavities! They hate us and try to kill us because we are successes, and they are failures. They are unable to build modern, successful societies, so they try to destroy ones that are. It is the trademark of the vandal...not the oppressed. It's that simple.
Think of Puerto Rican FALN terrorists (especially those Clinton pardoned).
Think of FARC terrorists based in Colombia.
Think of HILLARY in 2008.
"Hillary Clinton and the Radical Left": Hillary Clinton and the "Third Way" ***..........Like many New Left leaders whom the young Mrs. Clinton once followed (and who are her comrades today), I regarded myself in the 1960s as a socialist and a revolutionary. No matter what slogans we chanted, or ideals we proclaimed our agendas always extended beyond (and well beyond) the immediate issues of "civil rights" and "peace."
.....It is this same idea that is found in the Social Gospel which impressed the youthful Hillary Clinton at the United Methodist Church in Park Ridge, Illinois. She later encountered the same idea in the New Left at Yale and in the Venceremos Brigade in Communist Cuba, and in the writings of the New Leftist who introduced her to the "politics of meaning" even after she had become America's First Lady. It is the idea that drives her comrades in the Children's Defense Fund, the National Organization for Women, the Al Sharpton House of Justice and the other progressive causes which for that reason still look to her as a political leader.
For these self-appointed social redeemers, the goal-"social justice"-is not about rectifying particular injustices, which would be practical and modest, and therefore conservative. Their crusade is about rectifying injustice in the very order of things. "Social Justice" for them is about a world reborn, a world in which prejudice and violence are absent, in which everyone is equal and equally advantaged and without fundamentally conflicting desires. It is a world that could only come into being through a re-structuring of human nature and of society itself.
Even though they are too prudent and self-protective to name this future anymore, the post-Communist left still passionately believes it possible. But it is a world that has never existed and never will. Moreover, as the gulags and graveyards of the last century attest, to attempt the impossible is to invite the catastrophic in the world we know.
....Their cynicism flows from the very perception they have of right and wrong. They do it for higher ends. They do it for the progressive faith. They do it because they see themselves as having the power to redeem the world from evil. It is that terrifyingly exalted ambition that fuels their spiritual arrogance and justifies their sordid and, if necessary, criminal means.
......Conservatives who think progressives are misinformed idealists will forever be blind-sided by the malice of the left-by the cynicism of those who pride themselves on principle, by the viciousness of those who champion sensitivity, by the intolerance of those who call themselves liberal, and by the ruthless disregard for the well-being of the downtrodden by those who preen themselves as social saints. ..........***
I think a light bulb came on.
They just don't like what they see in themselves.
Developed nations are a glaring example of what they aren't.
...Mecca can be the Hiroshima, and Medina can be the Nagasaki.
Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
It's a start.
Wattage will no doubt increase with time.
Some people are born stupid. Allah commands terrorism, theft, rape, torture and lying. God commands forgiveness, love, faithfulness to your family and moral responsibility. If you cannot tell the difference between Satan and God, you deserve what you get.
I'm not one of those who accept the blame Bush excuse, but I can answer the question. It's not racist or bigoted to think muslims are incapable of accepting responsibility...it's borne out by the facts. When 88 people are blown up in Egypt the arab media blamed Israel...and yet Egypt are hunting muslims...so how good is the arab media and the large segment of muslim society who watch and believe it accepting responsibility for the actions of muslims?
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