So, it's the war that has caused the Muslims to hate us. But don't we have a chicken and egg problem here? Didn't we get hit repeatedly before we even went to war? This article attempts to get to the heart of the problem of why Britain is being targeted for attack:
So, it's the war, stupid not economics. Can it really be this simple:"Why is it not happening in some other country?" wondered Hussain, 53, a soft-spoken man in a tie and black-rimmed glasses who has lived here since he migrated from Pakistan 40 years ago. "Why is it happening here?"
The answer is that Britain has become an incubator for violent Islamic extremism, fueled by disenchantment at home and growing rage about events abroad, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
[...]In one of Europe's largest Muslim communities, young men face a lack of jobs, poor educational achievement and discrimination in a highly class-oriented culture. Prime Minister Tony Blair is the most outspoken ally of President Bush, and their policies in Iraq and Afghanistan are seen by many Muslims as aimed at Islam.
Britain's long tradition of tolerance has made it an oasis for immigrants and political outcasts from around the world, with its large influx of Pakistanis and other Muslims leading to the nickname Londonistan. Especially during the 1980s and 1990s, Britain became the refuge of choice for scores of Islamic radicals who had been expelled or exiled from their home countries for their inflammatory sermons and speeches.
[...]
The attacks last summer, and this week's disclosure of a plot to bomb jumbo jets from the sky, have created a sense of unease not often seen in a nation that stoically endured some of World War II's worst bombings and a 30-year campaign of violence by the Irish Republican Army. Being a target of a new kind of terror -- one without specific demands, that seems to many here to be motivated by vengeance and hate -- has created a new uncertainty.
[...]
Asghar Bukhari of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, which advocates Muslim involvement in the democratic process and opposes violence, said, "It's not hard to comprehend the mind of a Muslim." He said young British Muslims look around the world and "everywhere they are getting bombed," so they increasingly respond by saying, "Don't just sit down and take it -- let's fight them."
[...]
Hussain said many Pakistani immigrants moved out of tiny apartments cramped with relatives and now own multiple cars and houses and flourish financially. But over the years, he has also seen the seeds of radical Islam grow around him.
[...]
Is Campbell, leader of the Liberal Democrats and a leading opponent of Blair's government, said the reasons young Muslims turn to violence are more complicated than simply economic and social disadvantages.
"I used to think it was about having a stake in society, about people having poor housing and poor education," he said. "But the more you look at it, explaining it away as a lack of a stake in the success of the country might not be the easy answer some people think it is."
We weren't at war with anyone when we were repeatedly hit throughout the 90's and on 9/11 and yet the Muslims raged against us. They were preparing for their war long before we realized it. This article is just playing into the hands of the Islamic fascists."The root is foreign policy," said Bukhari, who has emerged in the past year as a leading voice of the young Muslim community. "Only a half-wit wouldn't understand that this is about" British and American policies in the Middle East.
Well, could we say that the war caused these people to protest the Denmark cartoonist with these signs:"It's George Bush's policy that got us here today," said one worshiper, a law student, who declined to give his name. "It's his wars that have breeded the mentality and hate that is here today. And what we're angry about is that our Prime Minister Tony Blair doesn't represent the beliefs of the people."
BTW, these photos were taken at a protest in Britain. Don't the Muslims who complain about the treatment of the police against the Muslim community remember these protests? I bet the cops do. I bet this is what goes through their head when they go into the Muslim community.
(Photos via Snopes)
How about these:
(Photos via The Jawa Report)
Now, keep in mind that this is Denmark that these people are protesting. Denmark's not at war with anyone and they certainly don't support Israel.
What do these signs have in common? Islamic domination. What do they want? Why do they hate us? They hate us because we are not under Islamic rule, they hate our freedom. Notice that this is a theme in these photos.
But since I'm not working for a newspaper and I don't have a degree in journalism and I'm not an influential member of the media with editors and anonymous sources, I know that there will be some who think I'm not qualified to form a conclusion about this matter. And that there will be charges that I'm too simplistic in my reasoning. Only those who have the right credentials are allowed to air their opinion, so how about a professor? Will you listen to her? The following except is from a review of Mary Habeck's "Knowing the Enemy" in the Weekly Standard:
SO WHAT DOES EXPLAIN jihadist hatred of the West? It is trueThey don't hate us because of the war, though it makes for a good excuse, they hate us because of who we are, they hate us because we are free and they don't want us to remain free. The rheteric they spew about it being the war is for the media's benefit so that we will lose our resolve to fight. We cannot let that happen, we cannot allow history to condemn us for being blind to what Islamic fascists made very clear to us with their protest signs:
that factors such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can help drive people into the enemy's camp. (Habeck refers to that conflict as the jihadists' "single best recruiting tool.") But Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and their comrades aren't simply reacting to U.S. policies. Their pronouncements reflect "their own most deeply held religio-political views of the world."
While Habeck draws a sharp distinction between jihadist theology and traditional interpretations of Islam, she notes that jihadist ideas "did not spring from a void, nor are all of them the marginal opinions of a few fanatics." For example, the scholar Ibn Taymiya (d. 1328), who is widely respected in Muslim circles, lived when the Mongols ruled over the Islamic world. Although they claimed to be Muslims, the Mongols' system of laws was based on their native customs rather than Islamic law (sharia).
Disturbed by this situation, Ibn Taymiya argued that the Islamic faith requires state power because the Koran only says that Muslims are the "best community" when they "enjoined the good and forbade the evil." In failing to base their legal system on Islamic law, the Mongols disregarded that Koranic injunction. Thus, Ibn Taymiya said that Muslims were required to take up arms against the Mongols.
Contemporary jihadists liken the modern rulers of the Muslim world to the Mongols. And there are scholars beside Ibn Taymiya to whom they can look for inspiration, including Abdul Wahhab and the three major jihadist thinkers of the twentieth century: Hassan al-Banna, Sayyid Abul A'la Maududi and Sayyid Qutb.
DRAWING UPON AN IMPRESSIVE ARRAY of primary-source material from these and like-minded Islamic radicals, Habeck makes her greatest contribution by illuminating the building blocks of the jihadist worldview.
It begins with the notion that only the Koran and ahadith (the sayings and traditions of Prophet Muhammad) are relevant to ordering the Muslim community. The views of more modern legal scholars, which may have a moderating effect on the faith, are given far less weight. With the Koran and ahadith as their only guides, jihadists believe that it is their duty to discover the "comprehensive ideology" contained in the Islamic faith.
For the jihadists, that comprehensive ideology begins with a concept known as tawhid. An Arabic term denoting the oneness of God, all Muslims have a shared belief in tawhid--but, as with so many theological concepts, the jihadists have a somewhat idiosyncratic interpretation of its implications. Echoing Ibn Taymiya, jihadist thinkers like Maududi and Qutb argue that if only God can be worshipped and obeyed, then only God's laws can have any significance or legitimacy. This provides them with justification not only for violently overturning social systems that aren't based on a "correct" understanding of Islam, but also for declaring fellow Muslims to be non-believers if they accept secular rule in place of the Islamic order that jihadists seek to impose.
The consequences of the view that only sharia law has legitimacy are far-reaching. For one thing, jihadists' unwillingness to accept secular rule places them on an inevitable collision course with the West. The jihadist thinker Fathi Yakan, for example, wrote of the need for jihad in response to "attacks from every materialistic ideology and system that threatens the existence of Islam as
a global paradigm of thought and system of life."
Their t-shirts:
And with their actions.
(Photos via Little Green Footballs)
