Chan'ad Bahraini

It's hard for me to even begin to describe the disgust I felt when I saw the scenes from the hostage crisis in Beslan, Russia. I can only imagine how the parents and relatives of those involved must be feeling. This has been a pretty embarassing week to call yourself a Muslim. Let's review:

• Enzo Baldini, an Italian Red Cross aid worker was murdered in Iraq
• Two suicide bombings in Beersheba, Israel killed 16 people
• 12 Nepali workers were slayed by terrorists in Iraq
• Three Turkish citizens killed by terrorists in Iraq

I'm sure there are a few more that I've missed, but these are the ones that I got around to discussing here.

Of course, the innocent lives lost are the biggest tragedies of these events. However, another truly sad aspect of the rise of militancy in the name of Islam is its hijacking of some very legitimate causes.In the last decade, many legitimate struggles that have been essentially social, political, or economic in nature have been hijacked Muslim militants and have forced the world to falsely translate them in to a religious struggle. By using Islamic terminology to describe the situation they have given these struggles an Islamic veneer. The sad thing is that they commit acts of terrorism under the banner of these struggles, thus removing any moral legitimacy that they may have ever had.

In Chechnya, Kashmir, Palestine and Algeria, Muslim terrorists have hopelessly destroyed movements which are legitimate, and have turned the victims into the bloody aggressors in the eyes of the World. They have completely undermined the very causes that they claim to aid, through their naive view that the ends always justify the means. In the long run this premise fails both morally, and strategically.

Most recently they've even decided to get involved in the hijab issue in France. By holding hostage two French nationals and demanding the reversal of the hijab law, the terrorists have tainted all French hijab supporters with the brush of terrorism through association. Their act has only made life more difficult for those in France trying repeal the hijab law through constitutional means. On a side note, Dilnareen from the Kurdistan Bloggers Union has a more accurate analysis of what the terrorists were probably thinking when they captured the French nationals:

I wonder how cheated that 'Islamic Army of Iraq' felt when they found out that France didn’t send an army to Iraq.

"3aweel you idiot, now what are we going to do with them, go wipe that foam of your chin and google france see what you can find"

"hmm cheese, stereotypes, amelie ah look says here they have a headscarf ban"

"sounds good to me, call up that jazeera fella and this time tell him to get that plain white on black background, none of that artsy flash effects"

Muslim terrorists have repeatedly and consistently ruined the moral legitimacy of just struggles throughout the Muslim world. I don't know when the Muslim masses will take a stand against their terrorist co-religionists and reclaim the legitimacy they may have once held.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 05, 2004 at 9/05/2004 01:40:00 am. Permalink