Thanks to my Salon subscription, whenever I want to, I get to read a publication I’d normally ignore —The New Republic Online. On the 8th, an article about the attack on London caught my attention. I’ve often said that the comments on this blog are what captivate me, that the discussions which spontaneously erupt under a post are the best part of the Mutiny. This week has proven no exception, as I am surprised and provoked by what some of you have said.
Your words made me think that a few of you might also want to read “Response Time”, by Joseph Braude, an essay about how Muslim groups responded to the terrorist attack on London, especially since SM regular Al Mujahid was repeatedly asked to provide “proof” that Muslim groups had denounced the terrorist bombing that rocked London’s transit system; he responded here and here. With that in mind, I found Braude’s piece even more salient.
Yesterday’s attack on the British people gave Muslims everywhere a chance to distance themselves from the radical Islamists who claim to have perpetrated it. While Muslim governments have taken the opportunity to speak out against the killing of innocents, Muslim Brotherhood offshoot groups failed to rise to the challenge. What they offered instead were statements full of equivocation—in marked contrast to other Arab politicians.*
Among Muslim heads of state, condemnation of the Al Qaeda “raid” was just as severe as the rest of the world’s. Jordan, the Gulf states, and Egypt as well as Syria and Iran all sent official condolences on behalf of the nation. Some went further: Egypt, whose ambassador to Iraq was also murdered by an Al Qaeda affiliate yesterday, called in its official press for seamless counterterrorist coordination between Arab countries and the West. In Europe and the United States, Muslim community organizations like Britain’s Muslim Council and the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) were absolute in their condemnation: “barbaric crimes” which “can never be justified or excused,” according to CAIR; “hateful acts” which only “strengthen our determination to live together in peace,” says the Muslim Council.
The response from Hamas was predictable:
Hamas, on the other hand, laid ultimate blame for the attack on aggression against Arabs and Muslims. In an official communiqué from Gaza, the movement declared:
We call upon all states and influential international societal forces to bring about an end to all forms of occupation, aggression, oppression, and discrimination directed against the Arab and Islamic nation—particularly in Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan—because the continuation of these acts offers an environment of tension and repression which naturally leads to a continuance of the likes of these acts and explosions.
This echoes what a few of you wrote:
In other words, the killing of London commuters was a case of the chickens coming home to roost.
Indeed, in a discussion that proved that there’s no such thing as overusing cliches, one SM reader brought up the concept that “all is fair in love and war” and that disbelief was unnecessary because during war, your enemies will attack. Another comment went as far as to breezily state, “been there, done that”, making me sadly wonder if a past free of terror is a prerequisite for compassion.
I don’t agree with either of these sentiments, nor do I think that the attack was particularly fair; I think the worlds collective horror does stem from the fact that London is not a battleground, the people who died or were maimed were not soldiers, nor were they civilians who are unfortunate enough to be living in Iraq or Afghanistan, where terror is tragically a part of daily living.
Pointing out that innocent Iraqis also die and that they are basically on our side in the WOT/against Osama may be stating the truth, but I just don’t care for the notion that feeling heartache and sympathy is a zero-sum game. I’m against the war, I’m horrified that Iraqis are suffering— but I am equally appalled that a few dozen people in London are dead. Feeling sad for one afflicted group doesn’t preclude someone from feeling sad for ALL afflicted groups.
Getting back to the TNR “online exclusive”, you know its the Jews or their American bitches who are behind it, right? Just like the WTC bombing, when all the Jewish people got fair warning:
In neighboring Jordan, the leader of the Sunni Islamist Al-Wasat party, Marwan al-Fa’uri, echoed another familiar trope: that the people behind the attacks were not Muslim, but anti-Muslim. After condemning the carnage, he told the Amman daily Al-Ghad yesterday, “Those who carried out these acts aim to vilify the image of the Islamic nation in British society—particularly after this image had improved among Britons—regarding Arab and Muslim causes.” In the Jordanian context, al-Fa’uri’s deliberate vagueness about the identity of the perpetrators invites the well-known speculation that Jews, or Americans, or some other adversary actually carried out the attack—not an Islamist group.
I guess that note from the cumbersomely-named al Qaeda-affiliate was a fake. Huh.
These two reactions—moral equivocation and diversion of blame—are not unfamiliar to Americans. In the weeks following September 11, they were on the lips of several Arab statesmen, including a powerful Saudi minister. Since that time, however, the scourge of Al Qaeda terrorism has visited many more countries, including Arab and Muslim ones, goading mainstream politicians in the region to separate themselves from the Al Qaeda phenomenon completely.
You know its bad when the Talibans response was more appropriate:
Over the past few months, much has been made of the need to foster the entry of Sunni Islamists into a more inclusive political process in their home countries—provided they disavow the use of force and cede a monopoly on weapons to the state. Yet the Islamist parties concerned have been less than reassuring about their good will toward a democratic process. In Egypt last month, the Muslim Brotherhood greeted Condoleezza Rice’s visit to Cairo with a quote from Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri on the front page of its newspaper, deriding American-style political reform as a sham. In Palestine and Jordan yesterday, Islamist responses to the attack on London were similarly retrograde. Rhetorically speaking, these groups have lately sounded less like pious opposition and more like the Taliban—although as far as yesterday’s tragedy is concerned, the Taliban happens to have been a bit more moderate. In an interview with the online Arabic magazine Elaph, Taliban spokesman Abdullah Latif Hakimi asserted that his organization was “neither happy nor sad” about the London attack, but at least noted the difference between civilian and military targets: “If these explosions had been directed against British military targets or had claimed losses in life among the British government, then we would have been very happy.” Even this basic distinction proved difficult for some Sunni Arab Islamists to express.
Sigh. If the TALIBAN gets it…
:+:
*My apologies, readers. I neglected to include the first paragraph of the TNR article this post quoted. I don’t think it changes things much, but in case it does in your opinion, I’ve added it. The article is now here in its entirety.
