Sunday, July 24, 2005

Enough!!


ENOUGH! Enough with the killing, the maiming, the lame justifications, the perversion of a religion. Enough with the hand-wringing and the muted protests that Islam is peaceful. The time for a quiet repudiation of the terrorists (and their methods) who have hijacked Islam is long over. It was over on 9/11 in New York. It was over on 3/11 in Madrid. It was over in September of last year in Beslan. It was over on 7/7 in London. It was over 1 week ago when a suicide bomber drove into a group of American Soldiers (injuring them) and Iraqi children (killing over 27 of them and maiming countless others). It was over when several bombs went off in Sharm El Sheikh killing 83 (the majority resort and market workers from Egypt with a few foreigners thrown in). It was over before it should ever have started.

From the beginning, Muslims everywhere should have been denouncing terrorism loudly. It is not as though no-one has ever suffered through a terrorist act. Anyone who lived through Lebanon’s civil war can tell you that terrorism is not a good thing. Anyone who visited or saw or heard about or lived through (miraculously) Sabra and Shatila could expound on the effects of wholesale slaughter by terrorism [N.B. though Sabra and Shatila’s massacres were perpetrated by a militia involved in the civil war, the massacre itself would be considered a terrorist act as opposed to an act of war as all the people slaughtered were unarmed civilians]. Any and all who consider themselves a moderate Muslim should have joined (loudly) in the condemnation of terrorist acts be it in Egypt, Turkey, Iraq, Iowa or the middle of nowhere. It is not as though the terrorists ask to see your passport before they blow you up. They have a very “with us or against us” mentality and it includes all Muslims who oppose them.

Whether or not you agree with the war in Iraq is not the point nor is the war in Iraq a justification for the wholesale slaughter of innocent people on their way to work or at work or anywhere for that matter. There are better ways to voice your displeasure with the war. In fact, one of the great ironies of the terrorist hit in London (as noted by The Economist) is that the hit only strengthened the Bush-Blair position on the war in Iraq and the so-called “War on Terror”. Instead of weakening the support for these wars, those who were previously undecided about the methods Bush and Blair were using to fight terrorism landed firmly on the side of war.

At this writing, one could confidently say that Islam is under attack, not from external but most definitely from internal forces. Previously, I had written that it was up to the moderate Muslims in all communities to self-police the community they live in. Now, it is up to the moderates to turn the radicals in to the local law enforcement authorities. If any Muslim attends a Mosque where the preaching has become increasingly radicalized or where there is a clear ideology of hate being preached then they need to inform the local police that this is a Mosque that needs to be looked at more closely. Those of you who would condemn me as a betrayer of Islam need to really think about the consequences we are facing if there is ever a terror hit in Canada and we knew and did nothing to stop it. Any moderate who does not turn in a radical is complicit in their activities in the eyes of those who suffer under terrorism. That is something we all need to think about and consider closely before we decide to stay quiet.


--Photo from BBC Website.

5 Comments:

Blogger gblagg said...

Amen, brother.

6:21 PM  
Blogger Zipcard2 said...

Good Post. I just wish some people would listen!

12:30 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Typical Yankee

4:37 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Wait, you're Canadian? That's even worse.

4:38 PM  
Blogger dabydeen said...

I agree. Radical Islam is about bombing the Muslim people, and preferably the rest of the world, back into the dark ages. By not opposing it most vigourously, the rest of the Muslim crowd is supporting it. If you're not part of the solution, you're most certainly a part of the problem.

8:58 PM  

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