At last
: It took Muslims killing Muslims to bring earnest condemnation and discussion of suicide bombing but at least it is happening. See this at Alt.Muslim:
But the power that suicide bombing brings with it is intoxicating, and as recent attacks in Morocco, Chechnya, and Saudi Arabia have shown, the line between civilian and combatant, Muslim and non-Muslim, has been all but obliterated. (Even Muslims celebrating the Prophet’s birthday in Chechnya found themselves a target.) Now that the carnage of suicide bombing is claiming more Muslim than Western lives, scholars who were silent about (or even approved of) the use of suicide attacks are trying to put the genie back in the bottle. “Bin Laden’s war is not with the US,” said Abdulmuhsin Akkas, a member of the advisory Shura Council. “It is against the Muslims and the Arabs. Bin Laden’s form of Islam is a violent way of life, and the Riyadh bombings showed us that.” Open debates about Wahabbi schools that “breed extremists” appeared in the Arab press. Even jailed leaders of the Egyptian Al-Gamaa al-Islamiyya (Muslim Brotherhood) called the recent terror attacks “religious mistakes.” But even a march of hundreds of thousands of Muslims against suicide bombing might not be enough to halt the bloodshed, as the tactic is spreading to new countries, genders, and targets.
Yes, just how will the genie be put back in the bottle? Can it be?
Katie Couris asked former Israeli PM Ehud Barak this morning whether suicide bombing will end even after peace with Palestine; there’s no answer to that, not yet.
It is an evil coming out of the Muslim world today and it can be stopped only by widespread condemnation of the act and its supporters (including, I will repeat, Yasser Arafat). They must be repudiated the way a war criminal is.
Germany was deNazified. Iraq is being deBaathed. The Muslim world must be de-terrorized.
: See this, too:
Al-Azhar, the highest authority in Sunni Islam, warned Monday that Muslim rage does not justify suicide bombings, such as recent deadly ones in Riyadh and Casablanca.
“These savage and blind attacks have terrified the whole Muslim world … and are in clear violation of many Islamic principles,” Al-Azhar’s theological research committee chaired by the institution’s top cleric, Sheikh Mohammed Sayyed Tantawi, said in a statement.
“Taking Muslims’ sentiments of frustration and injustice in other parts of the world” to justify attacks “is erroneous,” the committee said.
It’s a start.
