Ken Livingstone is an idiot
Ken Livingstone, mayor of London, claims that things like foreign occupation and a denial of basic rights turns people into suicide terrorists. "Under foreign occupation and denied a right to vote, denied the right to run your own affairs ... I suspect that if it had happened here in England we would have produced a lot of suicide bombers ourselves." (Ken Livingstone commenting on the origins of suicide terrorism in Israel.)
I am sorry Ken, but you are wrong. Living under foreign occupation or not being able to vote may lead to protests, unrest, civil disobedience, maybe even violence and revolution - but no civilized, moral society, no matter how hard they are pushed or oppressed, will ever lead to masses of people strapping bombs to their bodies or hijacking planes with the specific intention of dying and taking as many other people with them as possible. Keep in mind Ken, since September 2000 - beginning in Israel and now in Iraq and all over the globe, there has been a suicide attack nearly every single day somewhere in the world. That is a lot of people willing to die in order to kill.
Suicide terrorists are evil. They kill because they are convinced that intimidation and terror will enable their values, beliefs and ideology to triumph and rule the world - and in return for their self-sacrifice is a special place in heaven.
Suicide terrorists will never be stopped Ken, as long as biased, bigoted fools like you continue to make excuses and justifications for why they kill.
I am sorry Ken, but you are wrong. Living under foreign occupation or not being able to vote may lead to protests, unrest, civil disobedience, maybe even violence and revolution - but no civilized, moral society, no matter how hard they are pushed or oppressed, will ever lead to masses of people strapping bombs to their bodies or hijacking planes with the specific intention of dying and taking as many other people with them as possible. Keep in mind Ken, since September 2000 - beginning in Israel and now in Iraq and all over the globe, there has been a suicide attack nearly every single day somewhere in the world. That is a lot of people willing to die in order to kill.
Suicide terrorists are evil. They kill because they are convinced that intimidation and terror will enable their values, beliefs and ideology to triumph and rule the world - and in return for their self-sacrifice is a special place in heaven.
Suicide terrorists will never be stopped Ken, as long as biased, bigoted fools like you continue to make excuses and justifications for why they kill.
posted by The Big Elephant at 11:16 AM
4 Comments:
I found this article a few weeks ago. I think Mr. Friedman makes some intersting points about the mentality of an Islamic Suicide bomber. Thought you all should read this. -Yury
July 15, 2005
A Poverty of Dignity and a Wealth of Rage
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
A few years ago I was visiting Bahrain and sitting with friends in a fish
restaurant when news appeared on an overhead TV about Muslim terrorists, men
and women, who had taken hostages in Russia. What struck me, though, was the
instinctive reaction of the Bahraini businessman sitting next to me, who
muttered under his breath, "Why are we in every story?" The "we" in question
was Muslims.
The answer to that question is one of the most important issues in
geopolitics today: Why are young Sunni Muslim males, from London to Riyadh
and Bali to Baghdad, so willing to blow up themselves and others in the name
of their religion? Of course, not all Muslims are suicide bombers; it would
be ludicrous to suggest that.
But virtually all suicide bombers, of late, have been Sunni Muslims. There
are a lot of angry people in the world. Angry Mexicans. Angry Africans.
Angry Norwegians. But the only ones who seem to feel entitled and motivated
to kill themselves and totally innocent people, including other Muslims,
over their anger are young Sunni radicals. What is going on?
Neither we nor the Muslim world can run away from this question any longer.
This is especially true when it comes to people like Muhammad Bouyeri - a
Dutch citizen of Moroccan origin who last year tracked down the Dutch
filmmaker Theo van Gogh, a critic of Islamic intolerance, on an Amsterdam
street, shot him 15 times and slit his throat with a butcher knife. He told
a Dutch court on the final day of his trial on Tuesday: "I take complete
responsibility for my actions. I acted purely in the name of my religion."
Clearly, several things are at work. One is that Europe is not a melting pot
and has never adequately integrated its Muslim minorities, who, as The
Financial Times put it, often find themselves "cut off from their country,
language and culture of origin" without being assimilated into Europe,
making them easy prey for peddlers of a new jihadist identity.
Also at work is Sunni Islam's struggle with modernity. Islam has a long
tradition of tolerating other religions, but only on the basis of the
supremacy of Islam, not equality with Islam. Islam's self-identity is that
it is the authentic and ideal expression of monotheism. Muslims are raised
with the view that Islam is God 3.0, Christianity is God 2.0, Judaism is God
1.0, and Hinduism is God 0.0.
Part of what seems to be going on with these young Muslim males is that they
are, on the one hand, tempted by Western society, and ashamed of being
tempted. On the other hand, they are humiliated by Western society because
while Sunni Islamic civilization is supposed to be superior, its decision to
ban the reform and reinterpretation of Islam since the 12th century has
choked the spirit of innovation out of Muslim lands, and left the Islamic
world less powerful, less economically developed, less technically advanced
than God 2.0, 1.0 and 0.0.
"Some of these young Muslim men are tempted by a civilization they consider
morally inferior, and they are humiliated by the fact that, while having
been taught their faith is supreme, other civilizations seem to be doing
much better," said Raymond Stock, the Cairo-based biographer and translator
of Naguib Mahfouz. "When the inner conflict becomes too great, some are
turned by recruiters to seek the sick prestige of 'martyrdom' by fighting
the allegedly unjust occupation of Muslim lands and the 'decadence' in our
own."
This is not about the poverty of money. This is about the poverty of dignity
and the rage it can trigger.
One of the London bombers was married, with a young child and another on the
way. I can understand, but never accept, suicide bombing in Iraq or Israel
as part of a nationalist struggle. But when a British Muslim citizen,
nurtured by that society, just indiscriminately blows up his neighbors and
leaves behind a baby and pregnant wife, to me he has to be in the grip of a
dangerous cult or preacher - dangerous to his faith community and to the
world.
How does that happen? Britain's Independent newspaper described one of the
bombers, Hasib Hussain, as having recently undergone a sudden conversion
"from a British Asian who dressed in Western clothes to a religious teenager
who wore Islamic garb and only stopped to say salaam to fellow Muslims."
The secret of this story is in that conversion - and so is the crisis in
Islam. The people and ideas that brought about that sudden conversion of
Hasib Hussain and his pals - if not stopped by other Muslims - will end up
converting every Muslim into a suspect and one of the world's great
religions into a cult of death.
Tzvi...that was excellently written. Short and to the point and very powerful. You are right..Ken is an idiot and unfortunately there are too many who agree with him.
People often confuse excuses and reasons. One can state a cause of something without excusing it.
Not saying it's the case here, just pointing it out.
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