Let's take them up one by one-
The editorial, Cause and deadly effect, peddles the same tired old myth that were it not for Bush, Blair and those Israelis, the jihadis would be sipping green tea and singing Kumbaya.
The archetypal image of the terrorist — and that includes extremists under the rubric of Naxalites, Kashmiri militants, etc — is the person who takes recourse to grievances of socio-economic deprivation and being marginalised. The case with the global ummah — or at least its perception — is that the worldwide Muslim community is under attack and needs to react, in the tactics of al-Qaeda and other versions of Muslim brotherhood — violently. This, of course, for better or worse, cuts across States and comfort levels. Thus, we have individuals who, discomfited by the fact that the real issues, such as Palestine or the question of occupied Iraq, have not been quickly corrected, find other minor issues, like Salman Rushdie’s knighthood, to project as bugbears.
Radicalisation is not only about being down and out, but also about lashing out. It is about feeling frustrated. And that is why we should not feel so surprised about some Indians — who happen to be part of the community of people unhappy with the US-British-led War on Terror — being turned into disgruntled members of society. One hopes that the Indian way of life eclipses some complaints. But if some anomalies slip through, the question to be asked of those waging a war is: how to remove the cause. We’ll see what happens next.
In other words, blame USA, UK and that little satan, Israel for the doctors going mad.And blame Salman Rushdie too!(though he gets the lesser blame, since it's Blair who knighted him).
Oliver Kamm has an interesting post on this-
Only on the letters page of The Guardian would you find an argument, expounded without irony, of the form "as Osama Bin Laden made clear..." (last letter on the page). Its author is maintaining that there are substantive causes in Western foreign policy for Muslim anger. The letter, like so much along the same lines that appears in that newspaper's comment pages, is inflammatory nonsense, but I was particularly taken with the notion that we ought to tailor our foreign policy to the demands of a man who asserts (in his 1998 statement "The Nuclear Bomb of Islam") that "it is the duty of Muslims to prepare as much force as possible to terrorise the enemies of God". It is, of course, strictly true that the jihadists hate us for, among many other reasons, our foreign policy. The only proper response is satisfaction that we have that effect on them.
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On the same subject, I called after the 7/7 bombings for the sacking of the editor of The New Statesman, John Kampfner, on account of his emblazoning the front page with the preposterous and indecent message "Blair's bombs". The author of that cover story, John Pilger, this week pronounces the failed bombing of a nightclub in London and of Glasgow airport "Brown's bombs". I modestly direct you to irrefutable evidence I have previously cited that by the same criteria (which is to say, entirely bogus ones) all of these terrorist acts are in fact "Pilger's bombs".
Diane West wants to call it as it is-
This is nothing new. From September 11 onward, the yeoman effort of elites has been to wrench "Islam" away from all acts of jihad. But now, particularly after the London and Glasgow attacks, their efforts have achieved a deeper level of denial, and, worse, broader consensus.
The new British prime minister, Gordon Brown, has directed ministers to omit "Muslim" when discussing (Muslim) terrorism. And forget the generic "war on terror"; even that pathetic phrase is off limits. (This has absolutely nothing to do with Mr. Brown's unctuously stated goal to make Britain "the gateway for Islamic finance.") The new Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith (love that "i" ending) refers to British Muslims as "communities" — maybe a prelude to not mentioning them at all. Both have done the "perversion of a great faith" dance to enlightened applause, taking cues from the unpublished "EU Lexicon," which reportedly nixes such "offensive" phrases as "Islamic terrorism."
British literary lions couldn't agree more. Philosopher John Gray and historian Eric Hobsbawm recently said on British television that even the word "Islamist" was "unfair" because "it implied a strong link to Islam." Never mind the link is doctrinally accurate. Better to accommodate mortal threat without identifying its Islamic roots. Instead of defending their nations — for starters, stopping Islamic immigration and, with it, the progression of Islamic law into Western societies — our elites have decided to pretend Islam isn't there at all.
In the media, the effort is misleading to the point of farce. Joel Mowbray, writing at the Powerline blog, noted that the New York Times has identified Britain's Muslim terrorists as "South Asian people" — which, considering Britain's largest South Asian population is Hindu, is beyond absurd. "Diverse group allegedly in British plot," the Associated Press reported, missing that unifying Islamic thread. "All 8 detainees have ties to health service," wrote the Toronto Star, "but genesis of terror scheme still eludes investigators."
The roots of jihad, as Charles Allen points out in his book, God's Terrorists: The Wahhabi Cult And the Hidden Roots of Modern Jihad, go back to the time of Sheikh Ibn Taymiyya (b.1263), when the Caliphs were still around.
One of reviews of the book says-
British author Allen (Soldier Sahibs) argues persuasively that violent Islamic extremism isn't as new as we might think,------------ Carefully drawing distinctions between mainstream Islam and the fanaticism that spawned al-Qaeda (which he calls "as much a threat to Islam as to the West"), Allen goes back to the 18th-century founding of Wahhabism, a strain of Islam fostered in the Arabian desert that now serves as the Saudi state religion. Fixated on removing any hint of deviation from their interpretation of Muhammad's teachings, violent Wahhabists have traditionally killed more Muslims than non-Muslims. A Central Asia expert, Allen focuses on the form of Wahhabism that developed against the backdrop of waning British imperialism in that area, gradually leading up to Osama bin Laden's arrival.
(from Publishers Weekly, at Amazon.com)
There must have been Bush and Blair in the 13th century. The root cause of jihad, you know.
The absolute cluelessness of the concerned HT editor is made even more stark by this confessional article by Hassan Butt-
When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network, a series of semi-autonomous British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology, I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.
By blaming the government for our actions, those who pushed the 'Blair's bombs' line did our propaganda work for us. More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.
(all emphasis mine)
Note -since this post has become longer than expected, I shall be taking up the other two opinion pieces published in HT in a later post.
update -maybe the root cause of jihad is global warming!
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