Our friend Zaid Hassan – one of the folks behind the Pioneers of Change social entrepreneurship project – posts his reflections as a Londoner and a Muslim on the July 7th bombings:
At the mosque this afternoon there were two police-women standing outside, in fluorescent bright yellow-jackets. One was quite old. I couldn’t help but think “police-women? That’s quite odd. I wonder what that means?” The mullah reminded us that it was for our own good and we should be respectful. I saw a young man talking to them. Later on in the local donar kebab place a young laughing Somali boy put his friend in a head-lock, yelling “you’re under arrest!” White people look on blankly.
Zaid raises the difficult quesion, “Why is no one talking about the cause of the London attacks?”
Why is no one talking about injustice? Surely it’s obvious? Surely we all know that the prime cause of terrorism, of such acts is injustice? Surely we know that if terrorism is madness then it’s a madness caused squarely by being a victim of forces beyond comprehension? By being on the receiving end of an intolerable amount of injustice? Of having no tears left, of being drained of empathy.
I search around me in vain for empathy. I can see courage, bravery, bluster, pain, fear, sadness, but no empathy. No empathy and no justice.
26 comments
Zaid,
Your encouraging those who have been the victims of terrorism to ask why.
To be frank I don’t think this will achieve the results your looking for. In short what your really asking is for those who have suffered from terrorist war crimes to place ultimate responsiblity on themselves or their governments and exonerate those who have actually carried out the attacks, much in the same way some people blame a rape victim and not the rapist.
The point is that the question was asked and answered on 9/11, and again in Madrid, and now again in London. The problem that your having is that the rest of the world is not holding the victims responsible but are holding the intolerance and bigotry that has become the voice of modern Islam responsible.
No, I’m not saying we exonerate those who committed the attacks and nor, at least for me, is that an implication of what I’m saying. I really don’t get why trying to reach a deeper understanding as to the causes behind such attacks is an exoneration of an attack. It seems that people are unable to hold the two ideas in their heads simultaneusly.
The fact is that as long as we continue to simply blame (and punish) individuals for such crimes they will continue. I find it ironic that so many people in the West are lecturing Muslims on the need the hold criminals accountable. Islam haas always been accused by the West as being too draconian with its criminal justice system (although much of the reality of Islamic law is lost to inaccurate myth). Now when the West is attacked, the tables seem to have turned. People in the West seem to be arguing that we need to be taking more draconian measures, to hell with all this liberal heart ache.
I’d love to know what people (ie Thomas) think we ought to do in order to hold the perpetrators of such crimes “responsible”? What should we do exactly that will ensure such things don’t happen again? Hang people perhaps?
Couldn’t you argue that anyone who commits any crime has a ‘reason’ for doing so? Why we do we talk about some reasons but not in others? Unless you think this was less ‘criminal’ and ‘justified’ – which is what so many people are rejecting in their comments here. Normblog explores hypthetical instances of ‘reasons’ and then goes on to say:
Read the thought provoking post here.
But what I can’t figure out, is how you can begin to discuss what motivated the bombers if you don’t have a starting point..?
If you’re anti-war, you’ll probably think they did it because of Iraq. If you’re anti-Muslim, you’ll probably think they did it because they worship differently. If you think British youth don’t have enough to keep them occupied, you may think they were drawn to it out of boredom in search of excitement and intrigue? Or maybe it all has to do with video games and TV and Hollywood and young men growing up and wanting a life of excitement and adventure?
We simply don’t know, and never will, because they’re dead. And any attempt to push one viewpoint and argue for it over another is merely an attempt to impose ones own interpretation – or agenda – on the event. And that helps no one. It doesn’t teach us much about these guys and what makes them tick at all.
Personally, I think perhaps they were brainwashed. Shown graphic images strung together in sequence, fed a particular interpretation of Islam, persuaded the west was out to destroy a moral way of life and impose Christianity…. whatever. If that’s the case, then they didn’t act out of a moral cause, they acted on the basis of edited selective information designed to manipulate and provoke deep feelings. This isn’t necessarily the truth. We all know how two newspapers can tell the same story and draw entirely different conclusions.
But I’m probably wrong. How the heck would I know?
The bombing has led to no deep insights for me at all into the causes that motivate these men. I am still left with no idea what they want me, my family or my government to do to prevent future attacks.
So let’s withdraw from Iraq (one popular explanation for the attacks) – but hang on, what if the gripe was about extremist Islamic interpretations of westerners being morally decadant …….? What then……? Or what if it was about Palestine…..?
Maybe we should cover all the bases? Withdraw from Iraq, abandon christianity, aim weapons at Israel…….etc etc etc. Hell, why not give up your entire life and march to someone else’s tune entirely! Where does it end? And what happens when the Israelis get a bit annoyed and aim their weapons right back….? Do we then swivel around and fight the Iraqi’s again?
But what if the bombers did leave a note to guide us and say, for example, ‘this is about Iraq’.
Who’s to say that their analysis of events in Iraq – leading to the act – is completely informed, totally unbiased, absolutely representative of all the facts? Why should we act in any direction because THEY say so? Why is their interpretation of events in Iraq somehow the definitive view to inform future decisions?
We have a democracy. WE, the people in the UK, make our own decisions by voting in our own governments. I’m sorry if the decisions our government makes makes people in other parts of the world unhappy. But I totally reject any notion that your unhappiness means you can use terror or fear to try and force me to vote in a way that suits you, and only you.
What we know for fact – all that we know for fact – is that people murdered lots and lots of innocent people who weren’t even remotely linked to anything that could possibly have motivated them.
Unless, of course, these guys had a particular issue with people using public transport.
We know that people managed to get on those trains with bombs and kill civilians. We know they managed to do that. We need to focus on stopping them doing anything like that ever again. We need to defend our democractic right to choose our own way of life. And we need to catch the people who contributed to enabling the bombs to take place. And we must punish them.
If the bombers give me a reason why it was done – sure, let’s talk about it. What happens if we discuss it till we’re blue in the face and still ultimately reach a conclusion that doesn’t meet their specific objectives? Does that mean that they can bomb us until we change our minds out of fear?
Seems to me that an analysis which suggests that there is a causal link to the actions implicitly suggests that we will be bombed and bombed until we do as the bombers want us to do. And that isn’t democracy. I don’t know how you can ever intelligently deal with anyone who is prepared to kill themselves and others simply to get what they want. That sort of instinct seems to me to be a bit of a conversation stopper.
I think the danger here is to look at the bombings in London on the 7th as an isolated incident. Everyone seems to be asking ‘Why us?’, ‘What have we done?’ Why not us and what have all the other innocent people who are murdered everyday done? In many respects we (the British) are very cocooned from what is going on and has been going on in the rest of the world for decades. We need not be reminded that some countries suffer bombings, shootings, genocide, warfare and injustices on a daily basis. For those who don’t suffer it directly, who on the whole live a ‘safe’ and ‘secure’ life can, in a sense, become complacent about what goes on the rest of the world, simply because in many ways we are so detached from it, because it doesn’t ‘affect’ us, though that is not to say we don’t care. Take the anti-war demonstrations for example, it just goes to show, there is a huge body that does care and makes efforts to not become complacent about loss of human lives, think of the MakePovertyHistory campaign also. I do agree with Zaid that there is a broader picture here that does need to be addressed and investigated. I don’t think that all injustices breed terrorist activity but I do believe that if a voice wants to be heard and if that voice is consistently beaten down and forced to be silent there will come a time when that voice ‘explodes’ and asserts itself in any way it knows how, whether people are prepared to ‘listen’ or not. I am by no means condoning the actions of individuals who harm others and themselves by trying to get their voices heard in such a brutal and nonsensical way. But someone does need to ask ‘Why?’. Why are individuals ready to give up their own lives? We often say we’d die for something we feel passionately about… whether it’s our wives or husbands or children or anything else that means the world to us. Some would even go so far as to say they would kill for something they feel passionately about, something they believe in, let’s think of the lengths the crusaders went to as just one small historical example. We do need to know what people are fighting for, what they are trying to say even if we all know that they are totally going about it the wrong way in saying it the way they are saying it. Terrorist activity does need to stop, no-one wants to live a life of fear but lets look at both ends of that fear and both ends of that injustice, not just our own.
Enjoyed reading the many thoughtful, sober responses to the London tragedy. I haven’t seen this mentioned anywhere, but a likely fallout from the current situation will be that Western nations will almost certainly tighten their immigration and asylum policies vis-a-vis people from many Middle-Eastern and South Asian countries. And lest things become too peaceful and immigration officials lapse into complacency, bang! some nutty suicide bomber somewhere will do it again and reinvigorate the vigilance. I can’t say I’m too unhappy about this outcome. If only the Jihadis knew what long-term harm they’re doing to the Muslim community on whose behalf they claim to act.
perhaps they were just caused by the islamic teachings that justify killing of non-mulims