Thursday, July 06, 2006

bombers, martyrs

Just saw the video released to Al-jazeera of Shehzad Tanweer's Posthumous message. One part of the video struck me; the so-called justification for killing people was that they had voted for the government, and because the government is responsible for the repression and deaths of people (with an especial, emotional focus on 'our children, our sisters and our mothers') in Palestine, Chechenya, Iraq, and Afghanistan, therefore the electorate is also responsible, and therefore deserves to die.
I've talked before about false syllogisms on this blog, but this is taking it to extreme and absurd limits.
So perhaps there shouldn't be an electorate then? Perhaps we should just wait and do what we are told by some elder whon proclaims what is just and correct? Who should live and who should die? What is right and what is wrong?
Bullshit. The ability to get to the age of sixty and wear a beard does not, nor ever should, automatically be assumed to confer authority and wisdom - look at Prescott and Bush. Or Osama Bin Laden.
The London Bombers - these silly, ignorant, and ultimately murderous little boys, filled with the arrogant cetainties of youth, were cruelly misled by the arrogance and vanity of older men who crave power - not truly for the sake of faith, but for their own ends.
Jihad is, in its true sense, an internal war, just as the 'dar-ul-harb' (the world of war, or dar-ul-cahiliye, the world of ignorance) and the dar-ul-islam are internal places, a fight that needs to take place in the soul.
Blowing people up and killing yourself is not Jihad; it is murder. And that, if you are religious, does not guarantee you a ticket to heaven.

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