When Will the Deliberate Targeting of Innocent Civilians End?

Published in http://www.bangladesh-web.com on July 15, 2006.

Modern terrorists (all fundamentalist Muslims) have taken the art of deliberately targeting innocent civilians to a new height. The attack on Mumbai trains on July 11, 2006 was another chapter in this ugly global phenomenon. Let's show solidarity with the people of Mumbai just like we did with the people of London, Madrid, Bali and New York. Every time humans (if we can call them that) degenerate into this level of monstrosity, we must be firm in asserting that these terrorist acts have no justification or cause that can be used to rationalise them.

Foreign policy acts by global powers (notably the US, Israel, UK and increasingly Russia and India) are often cited as the main cause for Muslim anger and frustration. Global foreign policy is indeed a subject in its own right and can be discussed in its own track. But NEVER should this discussion be tied to any rationale that these terrorists might have. Deliberately targeting innocent civilians without warning is morally a far more repugnant act than engaging in the type of war (US in Afghanistan and Iraq) where diplomacy and politics had been used to try to prevent the war in the first place and failing that, civilians had some opportunity to be forewarned and where militarily, attempts have been made to keep casualties to a minimum - this is not necessarily a justification of those wars but it highlights a very important distinction.

There must be no double standard in the wider Muslim community when it come to this principle. Israeli occupation of the Palestinian areas must never be used as a justification of Palestinian suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. Muslims ought to be enraged at how the Shia-Sunni conflict in Iraq is maiming so many innocent civilians (and not simply blame America for it!). Every time a bomb goes off in Afghanistan, the wider community must not remain silent. The Muslim community in the west had a knee jerk reaction to the horrendous events of September 11 in New York city some of whom often claiming ridiculously that Jewish people were behind those attacks. This complacency was finally broken when London came under attack from British born and bred thugs of Muslim origin. The memory of Madrid and Bali bombings still linger on while more and more places in the world brace for future attacks.

It is incumbent upon the global Muslim community to rise up above their prickly sense of victim hood and Jihadi mentality. Without the soft support from this community (and of course without the financial support from the Middle East!) these terrorists would have had no cause, no home base, no ideology. There needs to be a paradigm shift in the intellectual and psychological sphere of every Muslim community in every country in the world. Too much time has been waisted in claiming how the west has indirectly created these terrorists. That point is a moot one while innocent civilians continue to lose their lives and infrastructure is destroyed in the name of Jihad and Islam. Muslims must also start wondering how comfortable they are with their faith being associated with such actions around the world. Not something that Muslims ought to be too proud of.