Viewpoint has asked where the expressions of soul-searching are in the Muslim community and is gratified to find a particularly good example of it here. It would, however, be a little bit more credible if the writer, Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, were not general manager of the Al-Arabiya News Channel which has not been particularly hostile to the jihadis. Nevertheless, the article sets a salutary example for the rest of the Muslim world. Here are some excerpts from Al-Rashed's column:
It is a certain fact that not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that almost all terrorists are Muslims.
We can't call those who take schoolchildren as hostages our own.
We cannot tolerate in our midst those who abduct journalists, murder civilians, explode buses; we cannot accept them as related to us, whatever the sufferings they claim to justify their criminal deeds. These are the people who have smeared Islam and stained its image.
We cannot clear our names unless we own up to the shameful fact that terrorism has become an Islamic enterprise; an almost exclusive monopoly, implemented by Muslim men and women.
We cannot redeem our extremist youths, who commit all these heinous crimes, without confronting the Sheikhs who thought it ennobling to re-invent themselves as revolutionary ideologues, sending other people's sons and daughters to certain death, while sending their own children to European and American schools and colleges.
The entire piece is worth reading and one hopes it receives a wide audience. It's evidently needed in London where the disease of radical Islam infects simple-minded clerics like Omar Bakri Mohammed. Mohammed, The Sunday Telegraph informs us, supports the targeting of children in terror attacks although he draws fine but ridiculous distinctions, as befits a cleric of the religion of peace. Here are a couple of his observations:
In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Mohammed said: "If an Iraqi Muslim carried out an attack like that in Britain, it would be justified because Britain has carried out acts of terrorism in Iraq. The Mujahideen [Chechen rebels] would not have wanted to kill those people, because it is strictly forbidden as a Muslim to deliberately kill women and children. It is the fault of the Russians," he said.
I'm sure this is news to the Israelis whose women and children have been deliberately targeted by pious Muslims for decades now. I'm sure it's news to the survivors of the horror at Beslan who watched their tormentors wire bombs to the basketball rims and laugh at the agonies of their children that this was all a big accident. It must have been an accident, too, that fleeing children were shot in the back. Mr. Mohammed is a moral and mental idiot.
The Telegraph tells us that the cleric made the remarks to promote a "celebratory" conference in London next Saturday to commemorate the third anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Why this man is allowed to walk the streets in London is not clear as of this writing. For that matter, it's not clear that he is any longer walking the streets.
Then we came across this pathetic piece of human detritus who has difficulty taking comfort in the fact that he has found favor with Allah for his participation in the heroic deeds at Beslan.
"Of course I pitied the children, I swear to Allah. I have children myself. I didn't shoot. I swear to Allah," he said. "I don't want to die. I swear to Allah, I want to live."
Anybody feel sorry for him?
