Random Musings on 7/7

I write this just days after the bombings in London. The thoughts here are not very well organised – more a spontaneous reaction than anything else.

Two things surprised me most:

One was the extraordinary bias that the media displays in reporting such incidents. So for instance, although about the same number of people died in the twin blasts in Mumbai in Aug ’03 (52 dead, 150+ injured, note that in the absence of established procedures, casualty and injured figures are usually under-estimated in India), not one political commentator mentioned that.

More distressingly, not one article or op-ed piece made any note of the fact that India recorded the largest number of terrorist attacks in 2004 (thanks to our ‘friendly neighbour’) only behind Iraq (National Counterterrorism Center’s report cited 3,192 terror attacks worldwide with 358 of these being in India).

The second surprise was the extraordinary levels of political correctness that has gripped mainstream British media and establishment.

Thus, the BBC apparently sent out a directive asking its staff to refrain from using the word ‘terrorist’ for the suspects in the blasts (the preferred word is a ‘bomber’ or a ‘militant’). Within hours after the blast, the Assistant Metropolitan Police Commissioner Brian Paddick said that the words ‘Islam’ and ‘terrorist’ do not go together (even though the vast majority of terrorist atrocities around the world have been carried out by Muslim fanatics).

One of the things that is becoming increasingly clear as investigations begin into the attacks is the fact that as far as global terrorism is concerned, all roads today point to Pakistan. It has truly become the epicentre for Islamic terrorism – a development that has its origins in at least two decades of petro-dollar funded and ISI-coordinated terrorist activities in Kashmir. On Sunday, 17th July, The Times ran a story on the ‘‘Pakistan Connection’

The Evening Standard noted on 18th July that, ‘all six of the most senior Al Qaeda leaders captured so far have been living in Pakistan‘. All the bombers in London had been to Pakistan. The latest bit of news is that police probing the London attacks are looking for 20 British terror suspects (ALL of whom are Britons of Pakistani origin), who have vanished without a trace.

Yet when asked to support the police in finding these criminals, Sir Iqbal Sacranie, of the Muslim Council of Great Britain says that it would be unreasonable to expect the Muslim community to monitor the behaviour of its youth – really? As David Mellor (former Conservative Cabinet Minister) said in the Evening Standard, ‘Can we allow British Muslims to get away with that?’ Sadly such voices are few and rarely being heard above the din of political correctness.

Several newspaper reports and articles have talked of these terrorists being trained in ‘madrasas’. Jack Straw himself made a comment on them. (London train bomber’s link to Madressah worries British FM, 15th Jul ’05) saying he was “concerned about what goes on in some of the Madressahs in Pakistan”

In a recent column, Tavleen Singh has rightly called these places ‘Breeding Grounds for Suicide Bombers‘.
Christina Lamb refers to the ‘Eton of budding Islamic warriors’ in a recent Sunday Times’ article (The Pakistan Connection), 17th Jul, ’05) “This was Darul Uloom Haqqania or House of Knowledge, one of Pakistan’s leading madrasahs based in Akora Khattak in the North West Frontier Province. The Eton of budding Islamic warriors, its 2,500 places are heavily oversubscribed. Upstairs in the hall leading to the Library of Fatwas, a roll of honour lists most of the Taliban leadership as alumni as well as an honorary degree for Mullah Omar.“

Ironically, the roots of this ideology are in India – near Deoband which is known for nothing else other than being the birth place of-Dar-ul Uloom – which in the words of Salman Rushdie, “teaches the most fundamentalist, narrow, puritan, rigid, oppressive version of Islam that exists anywhere in the world today“. Amongst its most ardent followers are the “Taleban” who were trained in the “Deobandi” school of Islamic teachings. (Salman Rushdie in The Times, July 18, ’05)

Again, most reports avoided the real issue – who were funding these preachers of hatred? and where were these youths turning up after their “jihadi training” (the vast majority of them do not have British or European passports)?

Did anyone even obliquely refer to Kashmir (or India) which bears the brunt of these crazed fanatics?

NO

But why would they when our own Prime Minister misses a god-sent opportunity to condemn Pakistan’s role in terrorism at the G-8 summit, hours after the London bombings? Instead of a robust condemnation, what we got was a meek, “the infrastructure for terrorism (in Pakistan) is by and large intact” – accompanied by a shamefully weak and mild comment from K Natwar Singh, “I have told the Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz that the terrorist camps have not been dismantled. We have the photographs and I have told him that we can provide photographic evidence“.

Unbelievably, he then went on to “hope” that the peace process with Pakistan would continue unimpeded, “unless there is a terrorist attack like the one witnessed in London.” (July 11 as told to BBC and reported by PTI). Needless to say, the attempt to blow up the Ram-Janmabhoomi temple at Ayodhya does not count.

Is there any hope amidst this madness?

See a later post on this: All roads lead to Islamabad!