Unity against terrorism
July 4, 2007 at 03:22 by Mike McQuaid
Britain again came under fire from Islamic extremists last week with attempted bombings in London and Glasgow. Thankfully no-one except the one of the perpetrators were hurt and their fairly inept attempts to disrupt and terrorise failed.
Two things have stuck in my mind when I finally heard the full story of events.
Firstly, I’m incredibly unthreatened by these terrorists. The sheer failure to cause any casualties in such crowded areas and the incompetence this shows is staggering. In my ignorant youth a close friend and I made “bombs” in his fairly large garden, as young boys tend to do. Our GCSE knowledge of chemistry allowed us to create explosions almost the size of his house, remotely activated with a radio detonator created from an old remote-controlled car. We were never harmed in these explosions and rapidly grew out of them. Considering these men who attacked Glasgow airport seemed to want to die in the explosion their sheer inability is made quite clear. This makes me a lot less intimidated by their attempted scare tactics.
Secondly (seemingly contradicting my first point), I’m amazed by the political response to these events. Both the Conservatives and Labour seem to be quick to call for “unity” and “bravery” against “terrorism” and “evil”. This political rhetoric makes me gawp. I could understand dodging the issues with the July 7th bombings when many people died but not now. No-one seems to be saying what everyone is thinking: “This wouldn’t be happening if we didn’t invade Iraq“.
I’m far from condoning the actions of the terrorists but we need to ask ourselves how many British casualties we are willing to accept to secure Iraq (read secure our oil supplies). This, in my mind, is another reason to push for renewable energy: to be able to have more self-reliant energy supplies without the need to have an aggressive foreign policy to protect our economic stability.
The worrying thing about this whole affair is that people within our country want to kill us to make us leave the middle east. How many British citizens or Iraqi civilians are going to be sacrificed before we try and get ourselves our of this situation?
Posted in Politics
These attacks do worry me, not in the way that I believe there is a strong probability of me being caught in one, but that they will escalate and we will turn into a country living in a society of fear and result in increased racial tensions etc.
Islamic fundamentalists have been plotting terrorist attacks against the west for a long time now, remember 9/11 happened well before Iraq. As time went on and they became more organized it was an inevitability that they would turn upon the UK. I read an interesting article written by a reformed fundamentalist the other day – http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-465570/I-fanatic–I-know-thinking-says-radical-Islamist.html .
I realize it’s published in the Daily Mail but it is an interesting insight into their mentality as it is from a primary source. It’s quite interesting when he talks about people blaming their own government over things like Iraq and how it made everyone laugh as it was taking the attention away from them. If you read publications such as their Hamas charter, it is clear that Iraq is not the driving force behind it, it is much more than a political protest that they are making. Did Iraq make us a slight more of a target? Probably. But would we now be experiencing the same problems had we not invaded Iraq? Almost certainly.
Don’t get me wrong, many people have legitimate objections to the war, I am still unconvinced of its motives and I can understand people wanting to bash the Labour government over it. But don’t use events like this to do so. By placing the blame on our government, you are taking the attention off the terrorists and their motivations for their actions, and in a sense legitimizing their actions by saying “if we hadn’t done this, they wouldn’t have responded like that”. The fact of life is that Iraq has now happened, which we all have to live with. We can continue to blame these terrorist attacks on our government or try to attack the root cause of their actions.
The root cause of the problem is that they see a way of hope of getting onto a better life through sacrificing their life for their God. There are passages in the Qu’ran which on face value do encourage these events and to “kill the unbelievers and the lands of the unholy”. To tackle terrorism we need to work with Muslim leaders who need to help to educate their own that this is not the correct interpretation of the Qu’ran and those who act in violence are not Muslims. Unfortunately this is not currently happening, and no one seems to want to talk about their religious basis in fear of being called a racist and the Muslims themselves do not seem to wish to tackle these passages themselves. If you watch the BBC documentary “the truth about Islam” (which is available on YouTube if you’re intersting), there is still a lot of support for preaching hate in Muslim communities and Muslims have not been distancing themselves enough from these attacks. If they do not manage to distance themselves we will turn into a country of widespread racial hatred in the not too distant future. I was glad to see on the news last night 3 Muslims condemning the terrorist attacks. However I think it is apparent that most Muslims are not doing this vocally. A few hours ago I was in the centre of Glasgow where there was the large official public protest against the terrorist attacks, I spotted about 3 people who looked like they were Muslims and about 500 young white students who seem to go to every protest they can. I’m not saying that Muslims have a duty to go to these events or that it is their fault, but I believe they would help themselves and the rest of the country to be involved in developing a solution to what is only going to be an escalating problem.
That article was truly fascinating, thanks for sharing it with me. That has really challenged some of my views on foreign policy in relation to terrorism. I still think some of this violence is due to Iraq and if not directly then indirectly as perhaps those who know about the attacks and could of prevented them did/do not because they are disgruntled about the war.
I do also agree that if there is a large Islamic community backlash it doesn’t seem very evident from where I am standing. I by no means think Muslims are violent people, far from it, but I wonder how much active resistance there are and information is being passed to the police about these issues.
I also am concerned about rising racial tensions and the increased violence against Muslims in the last week. I really hope this terrorism isn’t turned into another reason for asylum seekers or patriotic Muslim British citizens to feel intimidated or unwelcome.