Posted on 04/14/2002 11:26:26 AM PDT by Mel Gibson
CAIRO, Egypt - The Saudi ambassador to Britain, a renowned poet, praised Palestinian suicide bombers and criticized the United States in a poem published Saturday in a pan-Arab daily.
Saudi Arabian Ambassador to England Glorifies Suicide Bombers
"May God be the witness that you are martyrs ... You died to honor God's word. (You) committed suicide? We committed suicide by living like the dead," Ghazi Algosaibi wrote in "The Martyrs," a short poem published on the front-page of the London-based daily al-Hayat.
In an apparent reference to Arab leaders looking to the United States for help in ending Israeli-Palestinian violence, Algosaibi, who has served as ambassador in London for more than a decade, wrote: "We complained to the idols of a White House whose heart is filled with darkness."
The Associated Press was unable to reach Algosaibi for comment Saturday.
The United States has criticized countries and groups donating money to families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Iraq said it was offering up to dlrs 25,000 to the families of bombers. But Saudi Arabia, a U.S. ally, denied this week that money raised in Saudi campaigns to help the Palestinians was going to the families of suicide bombers.
The Saudi Embassy in Washington has said the term "martyr" used in fund-raising drives referred not to suicide bombers but to Palestinians "victimized by Israeli terror and violence."
By late Friday, some dlrs 92 million had been raised during a Saudi telethon. King Fahd called for the fund-raising drive to help channel Saudi public anger against Israel away from street protests and toward practical means to help the Palestinians. The telethon is expected to close Saturday.
In his poem, Algosaibi referred to 18-year-old female suicide bomber Ayat Akhras, who detonated explosives strapped to her body at a Jerusalem supermarket on March 29, killing two Israelis and wounding 25. It was the same day that Israeli troops began their incursion into the West Bank to crush Palestinian militias behind the attacks.
"Tell Ayat, the bride of loftiness ... She embraced death with a smile while the leaders are running away from death. Doors of heaven are opened for her," Algosaibi wrote.
Algosaibi is a well-known poet and writer who was once quoted as saying: "Poetry is the soul of the Arabs."
Throughout the Arab world, Islamic religious leaders and scholars have been divided on the issue of Palestinian suicide bombers.
Last year, the grand mufti of Saudi Arabia, Sheik Abdulaziz al-Sheik, declared that "any act of self killing or suicide is strictly forbidden in Islam" and consequently "the one who blows himself up in the midst of the enemies is also performing an act contrary to Islamic teachings."
In Egypt on Friday, Mohammed Sayed Tantawi, grand imam of Al-Azhar Mosque, mainstream Islam's top seat of learning, declared: "One who blows himself up among those (Israeli) aggressors is a martyr, martyr, martyr, and whoever says otherwise is a ... liar."
the Saudi Arabian Ambassador, Algosaibi said, "A man who revels in the killing of civilians and of innocent people and takes great pride in it is a terrorist."
9/25/01 BBC Interview with Saudi Ambassador to England
By the Saudi Ambassador Ghazi Algosaibi's own words, HE is hypocritical, schizophrenic and a terrorist. It's too bad that his Poem, "The Martyrs" cannot be recalled like Firestone's defective tires from the Arab Daily, al-Hayat.
Of all the horrific news from the Middle East, nothing has so colored this cycle of violence than the ordinance of walking weapons whom Israelis call terrorists and Palestinians call martyrs (now also an Ambassador from Saudi Arabia and the media is not adequately covering the story)
Any nihilistic culture of death that takes pride in having the next generation as a ready supply of cheap weapons has already lost its future. Any leader or representative who cultivates or condones suicide as a war plan has lost all moral standing. What do we say about societies that practice human sacrifice?
Including the 9-11 homicide bombers who attacked the United States (most of whom were Saudis lest we forget)?
"You had the choice between war and dishonor, you chose dishonor and you shall get war."...Winston Churchill
Virgins are few.
Except for you
Blow yourself up on an Israeli street.
A grateful Allah you will meet.
See, it's just like when you read the Koran and you see all that stuff that talks about killing infidels and non-muslims - it's mistranslated from Arabic to English. If you were to read it in the original Arabic, you'd see that he's not glorifying them, it's actually a poem about how terrible it is, and about how Islam is a peaceful religion - much like how in the original Arabic, the Koran speaks of the glories of how loving, kind, benevolent, peaceful and tolerant Islam is.
Islam is pissWhere were you and your gallant rhetoric when we Turks, also muslims, were victims of western fed Kurdish suicide bombing terror?
Martyr-Girl
My guts will shoot out
All over your marketplace;
Roman candles. Red.
Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia
601 New Hampshire Ave.
N.W., Washington, D.C. 20037
telephone (202) 337-4076
Saudi Consulate General in New York:
866 United Nations Plaza
Suite 480, New York, NY 10017
tel: (212) 752-2740
Saudi Consulate General in Houston
5718 Westheimer, Suite 1500
Houston, TX 77057
tel: (713) 785-5577
Saudi Consulate General in Los Angeles:
Sawtelle Courtyard Building
2045 Sawtelle Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90025
tel: (310) 479-6000
I receive kind smiles
They let me go first in line
They think I'm pregnant.
The same place the West was when its children were being kidnapped by you Turks and converted to Islam. Come on, let's go back some more. The Kurds are Islamics of course the same Kurds who were slaughtering Assyrian Christians for centuries. What did you Turks do about that?
This is frightening. If this guy is speaking for "mainstream Islam," I'd hate to see what the radicals have to say.
This pretty much verifies what I've been saying all along, however, which is that while there certainly are peaceful, reasonable Muslims, they are in the minority, and do not have the means to communicate their message to the masses.
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