LONDON BOMBINGS
9 July 2005
By: Ali Ismail
E-mail: aliismail_uk@yahoo.co.uk
Mobile telephone: 0778-842 5262 (United Kingdom)
The Battle of Falkirk of 17 January 1746 was the last occasion when a British army lost a battle on the British homeland
LONDON REELS AFTER TRANSPORT BOMBINGS
The 7 July outrages were the heaviest disasters for the capital since WWII
It was while I was surfing the Internet yesterday (7 July) that our Lithuanian lodger put his head around the door of our front room and told me of the happenings in Central London. That was how I learnt of the terrorist bombings that day.
At this time we are all just beginning to digest the hard facts about the explosions at underground stations at Kings Cross, Edgware Road and Aldgate East and the explosion on the upper desk of a bus at Tavistock Place. At the time of writing, the death toll has just passed the 50 mark and continues to rise. Several amputations have already taken place in London hospitals.
Bearing in mind that nearly everyone has placed the Islamic world as the primary suspect for the atrocities and that we are Muslims, one has to ask – Why?
Al-Qaeda is the organization which is under the highest suspicion and an anonymous group, which claims to be one of its apparently innumerable affiliates, has already claimed responsibility without giving any proof.
My argument is that radical Islam and Western civilisation are active adversaries and cannot be reconciled by any process of compromise and that violence is the only logical outcome of two incompatible philosophies.
Both radical Islam and Western values have worldwide ambitions and are mutually intolerant. As the ancient Chinese put it in their classic The Water Margin: ‘Two tigers cannot live on one mountain’. The post-Renaissance Europeans think that all the world should subscribe to the values of the Age of Enlightenment – that everything yields to experiment and that everyone should be, at least in theory, treated as equal however unequal they may be in fact. The militant Muslims believe in the values of a revealed religion as exemplified by the transmission of the Holy Qu’ran to the Prophet and that sharia law should underwrite certain social inequalities.
In nations subscribing to the Western model we find that on general election day everybody has just one vote. The man with an IQ of 70 has his one vote just like the university professor with an IQ of 170. Most radical Muslim organizations subscribe to a system in which social leaders are appointed and not elected and some of them want the whole world to be ruled by the Khilafah, a personage who has been appointed directly by God. That gulf in viewpoints cannot be bridged.
Looking beneath the surface, however, one finds that that citadel of Western values, the United States of America, possesses an economic system in which just one percent of the population owns 38.1 percent of the wealth and 40 percent of the people own virtually nothing at all. In Islamic societies the mosque network, buttressed by the zakat doctrine (one of the five pillars of Islam) provides a great deal of alleviation of suffering by the poor. Nevertheless, the underlying guiding ideals are incompatible.
The highest grievances of the militant wing of Islam are:
The military intervention in Afghanistan that overthrew the Taliban regime.
The military intervention in Iraq which overthrew former President Hussein.
American foreign policy which is supportive of Israel.
West European and North American propping up of ‘corrupt’ Arab regimes.
Osama bin Laden has said on several audio and video broadcasts that the Prophet Mohammed was an ardent advocate of Jihad even to the extent of using it against his own tribe - the Quraish - when they opposed his new religion. According to bin Laden, one cannot be a “true Muslim” and not use violence against active and hostile infidels.
The fly in the ointment, of course, is that the balance of power is currently tilted heavily in favour of the Western powers. At this time, North America and Western Europe manufacture most of the world’s most powerful weapons. The Soviet Union is no more and Russia is circumscribed in what weapons it can supply to other nations by the West. The Chinese are getting more powerful by the day (partly because of ‘stolen’ American know-how) but are yet to become the number one arms supplier to the rest of us.
Bearing in mind then that the Western powers are in a position where they can go anywhere and do anything with near-impunity, one can cross out the possibility of nation against nation international war, declared or otherwise, as a realistic option. That leaves terrorism as the only way left for radical Islam. That is the most probable explanation for the events of 7 July in Central London and before that in Madrid and in New York.
There are many definitions of the word ‘terrorism’. My understanding is simple. I regard it as ‘politically motivated crime’. By that I mean to say that if someone steals £1 in order to buy a loaf of bread for himself, that is ordinary crime, but if he steals that £1 in order to fund a political organization then it is ‘terrorism’ whatever the political organization happens to be, even if it is as respectable as the Conservative Party.
One highly significant fact is, I submit, that both the USA and the United Kingdom are, for most of the underprivileged world, invincible military powers. The Mexicans discovered at the Alamo that the new federation of states to their north was not a cakewalk to defeat. Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm II and Hitler all discovered by trial and defeat that the British were difficult and dangerous opponents. As for us, defeat of these powers by conventional tactics is almost impossible. The Communists won the Vietnam War because the American military was fighting with one hand tied behind its back by criticism at home and refusal by their own government to use methods which would destroy the Ho Chi Min trail.
The last time anyone tried to take on the government of the USA on its home turf by means of conventional warfare was the American Civil War when the southern states tried to break away. They failed. After that from abroad the Mexicans, the Japanese, the Germans, the Russians and the Koreans all had a go. They all failed, in different ways.
With regard to the British, the last major rebellion using conventional military methods on British soil was the 1745 uprising on behalf of Prince Charles Edward Stuart. If one excepts the abortive military attempts by the deposed King James II in Ireland, the 1745 rebellion was the last time and so it may be well to examine it briefly.
The adherents of the exiled Italian educated prince were romantics who wanted a return to the old days in the history of these islands in which the old church in alliance with a by-gone style of monarchy would rule (not reign over) the people. They were attempting to cast out the new mercantile class and business oriented social leaders in favour of prelates, an absolute king and big landowners. They were a bit like some of our own Muslim fundamentalists but wearing Scottish garb. They could not speak Arabic but used Gallic, a totally unknown tongue in London.
One feature of the contrasting sides was the difference in management. The rebels were wracked by dissentions and poor decision-making capability. They consistently made unwise judgements by which I mean that they failed to maximise the resources they had available to them. Furthermore, they had a major fifth column to contend with – the Campbell clan in Scotland was pro-government. On top of that they had inadequate back up insofar that their support from France was ineffective and was intercepted.
Notwithstanding all that, the rebels had successes. On 21 September 1745 they won the Battle of Preston Pans and on 17 January 1746 they prevailed again at the Battle of Falkirk. However, when they lost the Battle of Culloden on 16 April 1746 they failed utterly and their rebellion was over. The prince lived as a fugitive for some months before escaping to France and never set foot on British soil again.
The analogy with the present day Muslim world is there to be seen. Many fervent Muslims want a return to a theocracy as in the early days of Islam when the Prophet and his immediate successors ruled. Many of us have an instinctive dislike for the world of international finance, which is dominated by interest payments on capital. Many of us find that democracy sits badly with our genes and culture and prefer rule by a Khilafah or equivalent worldwide and for decisions to be made by ‘tribal elders’ or their equivalents at local levels. Furthermore, we have dissenters in the form of ‘moderate’ regimes and pro-Western people in our midst who perform the role of the Campbell clan for us.
Like the Scottish rebels we have almost no armaments manufacturing capabilities of our own. The 18th century British made their own weapons. All our major military equipment has to be bought from outside from suppliers who can be contacted by adversaries. The Americans, the British and their allies make their own weapons which are thought to be first class. They can disrupt the supply of battlefield weapons and such items as state of the art missile technology to Islamic states simply by having quiet words with the right people.
Of necessity, therefore, that leaves only ‘terrorism’ using home made devices targeted at mostly civilian populations as exemplified by the New York, Madrid and London outrages.
After 9/11, almost the whole population of the USA united behind their government against the hijackers and the Taliban was then removed by the incensed Superpower for giving aid and comfort to al-Qaeda. After the Madrid train bombings, there were huge street demonstrations against the perpetrators (although the next Spanish government withdrew from Iraq) and British public opinion is firmly against the tube and bus bombers. Ken Livingston spoke on television about the victims being not presidents and prime ministers but ordinary people who happened to be at the wrong places at the wrong times.
In other words, using the only available method of putting their beliefs into practice makes the militant Muslims stinking unpopular. We all know from our schooldays, the workplace and international politics that the unpopular man or woman nearly always loses. When a man’s enemies want to put him down their first step is to make him a hated person and isolate him socially; after that the rest is easy.
Bearing all that in mind, I submit that all we can do is to follow the Western ways and be ruled by them for this time in our history for to do otherwise is to surely bring about our ruination.
THE END
The 7 July outrages were the heaviest disasters for the capital since WWII
It was while I was surfing the Internet yesterday (7 July) that our Lithuanian lodger put his head around the door of our front room and told me of the happenings in Central London. That was how I learnt of the terrorist bombings that day.
At this time we are all just beginning to digest the hard facts about the explosions at underground stations at Kings Cross, Edgware Road and Aldgate East and the explosion on the upper desk of a bus at Tavistock Place. At the time of writing, the death toll has just passed the 50 mark and continues to rise. Several amputations have already taken place in London hospitals.
Bearing in mind that nearly everyone has placed the Islamic world as the primary suspect for the atrocities and that we are Muslims, one has to ask – Why?
Al-Qaeda is the organization which is under the highest suspicion and an anonymous group, which claims to be one of its apparently innumerable affiliates, has already claimed responsibility without giving any proof.
My argument is that radical Islam and Western civilisation are active adversaries and cannot be reconciled by any process of compromise and that violence is the only logical outcome of two incompatible philosophies.
Both radical Islam and Western values have worldwide ambitions and are mutually intolerant. As the ancient Chinese put it in their classic The Water Margin: ‘Two tigers cannot live on one mountain’. The post-Renaissance Europeans think that all the world should subscribe to the values of the Age of Enlightenment – that everything yields to experiment and that everyone should be, at least in theory, treated as equal however unequal they may be in fact. The militant Muslims believe in the values of a revealed religion as exemplified by the transmission of the Holy Qu’ran to the Prophet and that sharia law should underwrite certain social inequalities.
In nations subscribing to the Western model we find that on general election day everybody has just one vote. The man with an IQ of 70 has his one vote just like the university professor with an IQ of 170. Most radical Muslim organizations subscribe to a system in which social leaders are appointed and not elected and some of them want the whole world to be ruled by the Khilafah, a personage who has been appointed directly by God. That gulf in viewpoints cannot be bridged.
Looking beneath the surface, however, one finds that that citadel of Western values, the United States of America, possesses an economic system in which just one percent of the population owns 38.1 percent of the wealth and 40 percent of the people own virtually nothing at all. In Islamic societies the mosque network, buttressed by the zakat doctrine (one of the five pillars of Islam) provides a great deal of alleviation of suffering by the poor. Nevertheless, the underlying guiding ideals are incompatible.
The highest grievances of the militant wing of Islam are:
The military intervention in Afghanistan that overthrew the Taliban regime.
The military intervention in Iraq which overthrew former President Hussein.
American foreign policy which is supportive of Israel.
West European and North American propping up of ‘corrupt’ Arab regimes.
Osama bin Laden has said on several audio and video broadcasts that the Prophet Mohammed was an ardent advocate of Jihad even to the extent of using it against his own tribe - the Quraish - when they opposed his new religion. According to bin Laden, one cannot be a “true Muslim” and not use violence against active and hostile infidels.
The fly in the ointment, of course, is that the balance of power is currently tilted heavily in favour of the Western powers. At this time, North America and Western Europe manufacture most of the world’s most powerful weapons. The Soviet Union is no more and Russia is circumscribed in what weapons it can supply to other nations by the West. The Chinese are getting more powerful by the day (partly because of ‘stolen’ American know-how) but are yet to become the number one arms supplier to the rest of us.
Bearing in mind then that the Western powers are in a position where they can go anywhere and do anything with near-impunity, one can cross out the possibility of nation against nation international war, declared or otherwise, as a realistic option. That leaves terrorism as the only way left for radical Islam. That is the most probable explanation for the events of 7 July in Central London and before that in Madrid and in New York.
There are many definitions of the word ‘terrorism’. My understanding is simple. I regard it as ‘politically motivated crime’. By that I mean to say that if someone steals £1 in order to buy a loaf of bread for himself, that is ordinary crime, but if he steals that £1 in order to fund a political organization then it is ‘terrorism’ whatever the political organization happens to be, even if it is as respectable as the Conservative Party.
One highly significant fact is, I submit, that both the USA and the United Kingdom are, for most of the underprivileged world, invincible military powers. The Mexicans discovered at the Alamo that the new federation of states to their north was not a cakewalk to defeat. Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm II and Hitler all discovered by trial and defeat that the British were difficult and dangerous opponents. As for us, defeat of these powers by conventional tactics is almost impossible. The Communists won the Vietnam War because the American military was fighting with one hand tied behind its back by criticism at home and refusal by their own government to use methods which would destroy the Ho Chi Min trail.
The last time anyone tried to take on the government of the USA on its home turf by means of conventional warfare was the American Civil War when the southern states tried to break away. They failed. After that from abroad the Mexicans, the Japanese, the Germans, the Russians and the Koreans all had a go. They all failed, in different ways.
With regard to the British, the last major rebellion using conventional military methods on British soil was the 1745 uprising on behalf of Prince Charles Edward Stuart. If one excepts the abortive military attempts by the deposed King James II in Ireland, the 1745 rebellion was the last time and so it may be well to examine it briefly.
The adherents of the exiled Italian educated prince were romantics who wanted a return to the old days in the history of these islands in which the old church in alliance with a by-gone style of monarchy would rule (not reign over) the people. They were attempting to cast out the new mercantile class and business oriented social leaders in favour of prelates, an absolute king and big landowners. They were a bit like some of our own Muslim fundamentalists but wearing Scottish garb. They could not speak Arabic but used Gallic, a totally unknown tongue in London.
One feature of the contrasting sides was the difference in management. The rebels were wracked by dissentions and poor decision-making capability. They consistently made unwise judgements by which I mean that they failed to maximise the resources they had available to them. Furthermore, they had a major fifth column to contend with – the Campbell clan in Scotland was pro-government. On top of that they had inadequate back up insofar that their support from France was ineffective and was intercepted.
Notwithstanding all that, the rebels had successes. On 21 September 1745 they won the Battle of Preston Pans and on 17 January 1746 they prevailed again at the Battle of Falkirk. However, when they lost the Battle of Culloden on 16 April 1746 they failed utterly and their rebellion was over. The prince lived as a fugitive for some months before escaping to France and never set foot on British soil again.
The analogy with the present day Muslim world is there to be seen. Many fervent Muslims want a return to a theocracy as in the early days of Islam when the Prophet and his immediate successors ruled. Many of us have an instinctive dislike for the world of international finance, which is dominated by interest payments on capital. Many of us find that democracy sits badly with our genes and culture and prefer rule by a Khilafah or equivalent worldwide and for decisions to be made by ‘tribal elders’ or their equivalents at local levels. Furthermore, we have dissenters in the form of ‘moderate’ regimes and pro-Western people in our midst who perform the role of the Campbell clan for us.
Like the Scottish rebels we have almost no armaments manufacturing capabilities of our own. The 18th century British made their own weapons. All our major military equipment has to be bought from outside from suppliers who can be contacted by adversaries. The Americans, the British and their allies make their own weapons which are thought to be first class. They can disrupt the supply of battlefield weapons and such items as state of the art missile technology to Islamic states simply by having quiet words with the right people.
Of necessity, therefore, that leaves only ‘terrorism’ using home made devices targeted at mostly civilian populations as exemplified by the New York, Madrid and London outrages.
After 9/11, almost the whole population of the USA united behind their government against the hijackers and the Taliban was then removed by the incensed Superpower for giving aid and comfort to al-Qaeda. After the Madrid train bombings, there were huge street demonstrations against the perpetrators (although the next Spanish government withdrew from Iraq) and British public opinion is firmly against the tube and bus bombers. Ken Livingston spoke on television about the victims being not presidents and prime ministers but ordinary people who happened to be at the wrong places at the wrong times.
In other words, using the only available method of putting their beliefs into practice makes the militant Muslims stinking unpopular. We all know from our schooldays, the workplace and international politics that the unpopular man or woman nearly always loses. When a man’s enemies want to put him down their first step is to make him a hated person and isolate him socially; after that the rest is easy.
Bearing all that in mind, I submit that all we can do is to follow the Western ways and be ruled by them for this time in our history for to do otherwise is to surely bring about our ruination.
THE END
posted by Ali at 6:47 AM
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