Months ago Manish wrote about the ethnic slur “Paki.” In Britain this is the slur of choice when referring to all people of South Asian ethnicity. Brace yourselves. SM tipster Prem Khalon has been sending us the latest news clippings on the London bomb blasts. From the Timesonline:
Four friends from northern England have changed the face of terrorism by carrying out the suicide bombings that brought carnage to London last week.
It emerged last night that, for the first time in Western Europe, suicide bombers have been recruited for attacks. Security forces are coming to terms with the realisation that young Britons are prepared to die for their militant cause.
Three of the men lived in Leeds and the immediate fear is that members of a terrorist cell linked to the city are planning further strikes. The mastermind behind the attacks and the bombmaker are both still thought to be at large.
The man who planted the bomb at Edgware Road was named last night as Mohammed Sidique Khan, 30, the married father of an eight-month-old baby, who is believed to have come from the Leeds area.
Two other terrorists were Hasib Hussain, 19, who bombed the bus in Tavistock Square, of Colenso Mount, Leeds, and Shehzad Tanweer, 22, the Aldgate bomber, who lived at Colwyn Road, Leeds.
Police are still trying to identify the fourth, whose remains are believed to be in the bombed Tube train carriage on the Piccadilly Line. It is thought that he comes from Luton.
Another Times article goes into more detail about the bombers:
All were from suburbs orbiting Leeds, a city with a strong Muslim community, many of them with their family links in Pakistan.
Hussain was described by friends in Leeds as a tearaway. He drank and dated British women before being sent to Pakistan to visit relations. On his return he was said to have become a devout Muslim, turning his back on his previous life.
A neighbour of Tanweer last night told ITN news last night that he had spent four months in Lahore, Pakistan, and two months in Afghanistan. The neighbour, who did not want to be identified, said: “He was a good lad from a good family.”
Police refused to disclose last night whether the “personal property” found on the bombers included any clues as to the militant group behind this attack. There was obvious pressure on Scotland Yard and the security services immediately to mount armed raids on the men’s home addresses to reassure a nervous public that they knew who was responsible for the murder of more than 50 people.
Instead they waited, checking with agents in Pakistan what, if anything, was known about the four, or whether there were links with militant groups operating here. The security authorities wanted to establish how many more would-be suicide bombers were part of this cell.
Seems like a very tried and true pattern. If what his friends say was true, then Hussain sounds like a classic case of a born-again, brainwashed fundamentalist. The fact they were upper middle class and one had an 8 month old baby who he so easily made fatherless, should scare the heck out of the Brits, and all of us.
Not surprising… further confirmation that while all Muslims all not terrorists, all major global terrorists are Muslim.
I bet they were all just “confused young men” who just needed to be understood. I’m sure the spin doctors will say Islamic jihadi teachings had nothing to do with it. I have a bridge to to sell them…
Uh, no. Ever heard of the Tamil Tigers?
The chilling threshold we may have crossed here: was this the first terrorist attack in the Western world by 2nd gen desis?
“Uh, no. Ever heard of the Tamil Tigers?”
They’re not global, they’re localized. But they were the inventors of the suicide bomber, so let’s give credit where credit is due. According to Robert Pape of the University of Chicago, who keeps a database of suicide bombers, the Tamil Tigers account for almost half of the world’s 800+ suicide bombings in the past 30 years.
But I share Manish’s concern of how Western-raised South Asians can reject all those opportunities, and opt instead for nihilism. Britain should have seen this coming when a British born lad named Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, born to an upper-class Pakistani immigrant family and accepted into the London School of Economics – instead made a name for himself by slicing the head off of Daniel Pearl, and broadcasting it on the web.
That men like this, born in the UK, can fly into the U.S. without a visa is a new security challenge.
No big surprise !!
I knew it the first time I heard about it…
Pakis…huh ?! They’ll discover that these guys had made a trip to Pakiland as part of their preparations for jihad..
Maybe Blair will invite Mushy over to London and knight him for his ‘co-operation’ in the War on Terror™®…
I’m waiting to see how long the Paki honeymoon with Washington lasts.
Manish..while the Tigers, the IRA and the Basque separatists definitely werte not muslim, take a map of the world and look at the terror backed by religious authorities in the last 10 years.
Lets start with the US(911), London, Spain, France, Bosnia, Chechnya, Israel, India, Afghanistan, Thailand, Philippines, China, Indonesia…
See any common thread ?
Uhh.. where does it say they were 2nd gen?
An interview with Robert Pape can be found here:
“The Logic of Suicide Terrorism – it’s the occupation, not the fundamentalism” The American Conservative http://www.amconmag.com/2005_07_18/article.html
Some choice quotes:
“This wealth of information creates a new picture about what is motivating suicide terrorism. Islamic fundamentalism is not as closely associated with suicide terrorism as many people think. The world leader in suicide terrorism is a group that you may not be familiar with: the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka.”
“The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign—over 95 percent of all the incidents—has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.”
“If Islamic fundamentalism were the pivotal factor, then we should see some of the largest Islamic fundamentalist countries in the world, like Iran, which has 70 million people—three times the population of Iraq and three times the population of Saudi Arabia—with some of the most active groups in suicide terrorism against the United States. However, there has never been an al-Qaeda suicide terrorist from Iran, and we have no evidence that there are any suicide terrorists in Iraq from Iran.”
Good to see my old stomping grounds coming up with original research.
Um… when did the LTTE attack an area outside Sri Lanka … ? (I suppose I could include Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination).
When did the Basque terrorists attack outside Spain ? Same with the IRA and the Italian Red Brigade of the 70s. Muslim terrorism is unique in that it is global. There are no borders or specific nationalities of the members of the Islamic jihad groups. A pan-national multi-ethnic terror group all bound only by a common ideology: Islamic jihad. Do I need to be any more ?
Their parents were the 1st gen to immigrate. They were born in the UK = 2nd gen.
More London Times coverage: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
New York Times: 1, 2, 3
Telegraph: 1, 2, 3
Here are all the stories.
The spin doctors of the BBC are already at work:
I suppose Churchill’s war time speeches would never have made past the BBC’s PC censors, as it might have offended the Germans…
Will they replace the word “backlash” with “misdirected retaliation”?
‘Major global terrorists’ was ambiguous re: whether it meant ‘in the world’ vs. ‘with worldwide operations.’ Thanks for clarifying.
These guys were suburbanites and college students:
The NYT is saying the triggers were similar to those used in Madrid.
Prior to this, Pakistani Brits suicide-bombed Israel and U.S. troops in Iraq and helped Richard Reid, the would-be shoe bomber. Some were also found fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan.
I’m waiting for Western Muslims to start making comments to effect of “They were just like the Columbine killers, this was nothing to do with Islam or Jihad against the West. They were led astray by violent video games“. And the nodding apologists in the Western (British) media indulging the cycle of denial about Islamic jihad.
Britain also has a high number of Kashmiris whose families live on the Pakistani side of the LOC. Many Kashmiri jihadi groups get money, and even young men from Britain.
While its true their terrorist attacks are localized within Sri Lanka, the tamil tigers are a big nuisance here in Toronto.
Thousands of Sri Lankan tamils got refugee status in Canada during the war, quite a few of them were connected to the Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
Most tamils in toronto are sympathetic to the LTTE and do they quite openly raise money for them. They are the only South Asian group I know of engaged in organized crime, and gang warfare in North America. ( there are some second generation ‘Kalistanis’ in Vancouver, though my impression is they are just small time punks).
Ethnic makeup: as KXB says, lots of Kashmiri Muslims.
They are the only South Asian group I know of engaged in organized crime, and gang warfare in North America.
The Vancouver Punjabi gangs are into pot smuggling and have turned violent.
Obviously, religion failed Hussain; he was a better person as an “infidel.” This was exactly the point I made in my post on Excessive Morality.
Mirpuri Kashmiris are mostly Punjabi-speaking, not ethnically the same as those Kashmiris (Muslim and Hindu) whose native tongue is ‘Koshur’/Kashmiri.
Kumar
I suppose I should add that I’m talking about the ‘native’ language of Mirpuris, not suggesting that they don’t, e.g., also speak Urdu.
Kumar
We all agree that there’s a global Islamist jihadi terrorist movement (whether organized, or loosely connected, or totally decentralized). It’s a trivial point, so what is the purpose of continuing to reiterate this fact over and over and over?
It’s less obvious, but more relevant to me, at least, that why a bunch of young men with babies and/or other possible strong worldly connections allegedly killed themselves and others for nothing. And why others likely will in the future.
On a sidenote, KXB, thanks for the link to that article. Also, here’s a list of all the events that the US State Department (grain of salt) historian lists as terrorist incidents from 1961 to 2003.
As the reaction of the BBC has shown, several major news networks in the UK and outside are not in agreement that there is such a thing as “global jihadi terrorist movement”.
This is hilarious in a macabre ostrich with-its-head-in-the-sand kind of way: you do agree that there is global Islamic jihad, and yet somehow given all the information about the brainwashing of the followers of that movement to convert them into suicidal weapons of mass destruction, you are still looking for answers to their actions and motivations ? Several of the 9/11 hijackers and planners (Mohammed Atta, Ziad Jarrah, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed et al) had college degrees, girl friends and “worldly connections”. Didn’t impede their cold blooded planning either. Same holds true here.
To quote from the wikipedia entry for Kamikaze :
Doesn’t that sound depressingly familiar …?
It’s not worth getting into an argument, but what the hell. If you’re using the evidence above, that’s not at all what those news sources are doing (particularly given that people are predisposed to assume that this action is part of a global jihadi terrorist movement). I believe they’re engaged in really responsible journalism by not stating things as facts before they’re reasonably certain and using a high standard for certainty. Remember how one group claimed responsibility for this incident and now there are two who are doing so? Or how Muslims were targeted after the 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City in part because of things shown on the news that claimed some kind of connection? Or the 2000 election in the U.S.?
Yes, I want to know what predisposes them to be brainwashed (if in fact that’s what happened–how do you know one or more weren’t cold calculating malicious people–I think even the historical parallel you draw is flawed because I know next to nothing about these four people based on what I’ve read and seen so far). There are maybe a handful of Zarqawis in the world, but a lot more guys like these four. It would probably behoove us to try and understand what the predisposing factors are in getting involved in this kind of thing on more than a surface level (there are plenty of fundamentalists of all stripes who never blow anything up).
What’s the alternative to trying to figure these guys out (as well as whoever else was involved, the money trail, where the explosives came from, and all that)? To just sit around and repeat over and over that there’s an Islamist terrorist movement of global reach?
Guess what Abhi, this is the profile of a terrorist. It isn’t a poor kid, or a disenfranchised man seeking revenge. Empirically it has been proven that most of these folks come from middle class/upper middle class families and feel lost/confused and rationalize jihadi behavior as an outcome for some form of sense of belonging (not that dissimilar to gang behavior).
Here’s another source on the Oklahoma City link in case you don’t find the last website I linked credible.
This is why I am not comfortable with the terms desi and south asian. I am an Indian citizen and prefered to me called an Indian. I hate it when someone refers to me as desi or south asian, I am certainly not an Paki or Bangladeshi.
If you are not an Indian citizen, you are NOT an Indian. Period.
What exactly is “this.” Dude, you are brown. A person’s eyeballs aren’t going to look at you and think of whatever term you want them to think. Honestly, an attitude like yours just isn’t productive. Hate doesn’t follow neat logic or correct terminology. I for one am proud to be South Asian and desi.
I wouldn’t be so quick to rule out all connections between the Oklahoma bombings and Muslim groups…Aryan Nation leader reaches out to al Qaeda
Like the saying goes “The enemy of my enemy is my friend”
Islamic jihad groups/Al Qaeda are increasing seen as joining up with other non-Muslim terror groups to achieve their goals.
And given that the 1995 Oklahoma bombings took place just over 2 years after the first WTC bombings in 1993, it is not that unreasonable to see why Islamic groups were suspected. Or have you forgotten that incident already ? All investigations go through a process of eliminating anyone who has shown a similar modus operandi in the past. And guess which group has shown a marked propensity for using high explosives and truck bombs against the U.S government and its citizens ?
Behold the tired repetition (and collusion) of nation-state identity and political identity. Behold the inability of someone who perhaps hasn’t been weaned from Mother India’s tainted milk to see beyond his programming. Behold the waving of the tri-color in defiance (or is it relief?) because the suspects have roots in loathed Pakistan.
But, by the reader’s own logic, if they aren’t Pakistani citizens (which they likely wouldn’t be if British-born), then they aren’t Pakistani. Period.
But this hatred might go far beyond the national identity that this poor sap seems to have laid out neatly before us. Unfortunately, he’s been bamboozled by the national machine to believe in the state constructed identity as his own, and he can’t see the immediate limits of his bravado and wanton patriotism.
Vikram is right.
After being schooled in jihad, Islamist terrorists have their choice of violent jihads around the globe. They can choose from Iraq, Kashmir, Chechnya, the Philippines, the United States, Malaysia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia (isn’t talked about much, but there is a war between the royals and the wahabbis), or Europe. That is quite global, no?
umm… There actually is a major problem with the use of terms like ‘South Asian’ and ‘desi’ to refer to all ‘brown’ people. The fact is that none of the bloggers on this site are 2nd gen pakistanis, bangladeshis or afghans. You’re parents were all Indian.
Similarly, none of the terrorists who have been identified are 2nd gen indians. There are major (cultural, political etc.) differences between Indians and Pakistanis as well as between the children of Indians and Pakistanis. Terms like ‘South Asian’ whitewash (!) those differences and blur the issues in this discussion. I don’t need to tell you that with the stakes as high as they are with the terrorism issue, only a clear identification of factors and people involved will allow us to reach practical and implementable solutions.
Gentlemen,
Tangential comment, not directly related to the post.
Re this “South Asian” tag — I agree with my friend, Joydeep Mukherji who posted a comment (below) on my blog some time back.
A politically incorrect view, but with some validity.
No Chinese says he is “east Asian”, no Malay says he is “Southeast Asian”, and no Japanese says he is “northeast Asian”. Only Indians who do not know who they are, or do not want to say it, hide under the garb of “south Asian”. It is an Indian invention that has fooled very few Pakistanis or Bangladeshis or Nepalis or Sri Lankans. That is why most “South Asian” organizations I have met are Indian organizations, with an occasional Pakistani or Sri Lankan who wants to find a date or is looking for a curry dinner. Western liberals and academics have also adopted this term “South Asian” as it makes it sound as if they are more liberal by overlooking the real differences between the countries in that region.
Can Indians now blame the western media for picking up the very nonsense they started?
I find the nationalism thing really strange. Pakistan has only been around since 1947, and Bangladesh since 1971. What does this mean to 2nd-gen kids of parents who might have been born when everything was simply Indian? Why are all the generations who settled in Africa still considered Indian rather than Kenyan or whatever? My brown boyfriend was trying to a “Person of Indian Origin” card because the rules said you can be considered provisionally Indian (for special visa purposes) if your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents or spouse was born in India as defined by the Indian Act of 1917 or something like that. But because he was born in Dhaka (when it was still East Pakistan), the Indian Embassy says no way. But we’re like, obviously all his family came from what was called India at the time when they were born, so that should count. My friends in India are like, good luck battling that one, Indians have SERIOUS issues with Pakistanis and Bangladeshis.
Obviously there are massive differences in language, culture, religion, etc. all over India, so what would be your defense if Partition had never happened? The UK bombers were Muslim, not Hindu? Kashmiri, not Gujarati? Nationalism, especially for borders that were thrown up arbitrarily and recently, is a confusing thing.
In high school, I worked in a Chinese fast food restaurant owned by a Jewish guy and staffed by black guys. In a discussion about racism one day, one dude laughed and said “An asshole is an asshole no matter WHAT color he is!” So there are bombers in many areas acting under different cultural and religious influences, so all you can do is look at each situation individually, right?
British Pakistanis born and bred in England have already commited suicide bombings abroad, in Kashmir and in Israel. The British Pakistani community is a hotbed of Jihad. Serious questions are going to be asked now. The man who captured Daniel Pearl was a British Pakistani, who had attended one of the most expensive and exclusive private schools in London, the son of an extremely rich businessman.
All of the usual obfuscating about poverty and exclusion fall flat on their face. A strain of extremist Islam that makes some Muslims boys hate western liberal secular democracy so much they are ready to strap explosives to themselves and blow themselves up killing dozens of ‘infidels’.
I am trying to imagine the intensity of such hatred. Whenever I imagine it I get burnt.
Things have got to change. There is a palpable change in the mood in the UK. It is not a backlash or anything crude like that. It is a tangible feeling amongst the liberals who previously had indulged those Muslims who spun the wretched line about ‘Zionism’, ‘Poverty’, ‘Jihad is a peaceful struggle’, basically blaming everyone and everything except those who are to blame, the deeply pernicious ideology of Jihad inside Islam; these liberals have seen the light and are not buying this nonsense and cant anymore. It has been seen through. It is over. No more pussyfooting around the issues or political correctness.
The disease that is inside modern British Islam, even if it is not representative, exists in a pool of Jew-hating, West-hating sympathy of the wider community. No more lies. We have to act now. And the Muslim community itself has to be ruthless in combatting its fanaticism from the inside.
In short, if British Muslims do not clean up their own mess alongside the state, the state will do it on behalf of sixty million British citizens and have the consent of every one of them.
No more lies or deception. Just do it. Face up to the truth now.
Fascism will never be tolerated by the British people. Those people in the Muslim community who seek to justify fascism will be seen as part of the wider pool of sympathy in which these murderers and their ideology breathes.
I agree with Joydeep. There should be no compromise or diluting of the Indian identity. Being an Indian is a national identity, if you are not an Indian citizen, you can be refer yourself or be refered to as a bengali, punjabi, sikh, malayalee etc. and add ‘American-‘, ‘Bristish-‘ or ‘Canadian-‘ before it.
Saurav
You really are an ostrich with his head in the sand, and at this moment, your sophistry is a serious moral failing, in fact, I would say it is an act of moral turpitude.
To Abhi,
Ever tried going back to “South Asia”? It is unfortunately an NRI (of a certain stripe – who goes all jelly-kneed over his /her “brethren’s” culture to the West)construct that is as clearly defined as amoeba. As someone from the south of India I have more in common with the Yanomamos than Pakistanis. Sorry, the South Asian label has as much appeal to me as a kiss from a cobra
Dear Writer from Banglatown, Your ‘brown boyfriend’ is bengali which does not by default make him an Indian. If he has no documented proof of his past generations being from the Indian Republic, he can’t get a PIO card. Why does he need one if he doesn’t have relatives or land there? If he wants to visit India he can always get a tourist visa. If he wants to be an Indian, he can marry an Indian, live in India for five years, take a language test (any of the 18 official languages) and surrender his exisitng passport.
So if I take up the “dual citizenship” option that has recently opened up, what does that make me?
Just curious…
Is it my passport that defines me?
Dear Green Angel, the Overseas Indian Passport (OIP) is NOT dual citizenship. Infact, you don’t get an Indian passport, you get a smart card which will be attached to your existing passport. You cannot vote and apply for government and security related jobs. I haven’t read much into the commercial and business guidelines, but you can read them at the MEA website. The OIP is an updated version of the PIO card but only those who left India after Jan 26, 2005 can apply for it. The passport is an indication of where your loyalty lies. You cannot be loyal to two countries, choose one and stick to it.
“You cannot be loyal to two countries, choose one and stick to it” I have lived in the US for over 20 years and but am absolutely loyal to the US while in no way “disloyal” to India. My idea of loyalty – paying my dues to society by way of giving my time pro-bono for various people and causes in my present milieu. Loyalty to India comes easy – from a variety of ways including supporting “Indian” causes in the US and during visits to India. When there is little inherent conflict either in trade or even in foreign policy – despite perceptions in the political class and some intellectuals in India – between the two countries it is easy to not have to choose. The same cannot be said if one were living in most European countries or, worse, in West Asia
Jacob, When they push you to the ground and kick you in the head while shouting ‘fucking paki’, you can tell them that you are an Indian citizen with an Indian passport who has never been to Pakistan nor knows Pakistanis. Maybe the Sikhs who use to manage the burnt Guruduwaras thought the same thing. Important thing in life is perception. I have a Pakistani friend. People almost always invariably presume that he is ‘Indian’. No white person can tell the difference between an Indian or a Pakistani or a Bangladeshi. (People who are real light in skin tone might be perceived as Middle Eastern which will bring even more stares) I think for people living in the US or UK, being ‘brown’ is an important part of your identity. When people around you dont know or care to know about the differences between a Singhalese, Tamil, Bengali, Punjabi or Sindhi and treat you all as ‘brown’, you cant help but feel ‘brown’.
jacob joseph– write about your all consuming obsession with whether or not someone is indian on YOUR blog. your comments read like, “whew! good thing it was those PAKIS who did it!” like that’s so productive. guess you don’t have anything to worry about– except that you do, because people who want to commit a hate crime aren’t going to listen to you scream that “i’m indian!” or “i’m bengali!” as they assault you– you’re just a filthy paki/hindu/terrorist to them. your nationality means nothing to those who aren’t part of this navel-gazing exercise in who is or who isn’t “indian”.
does anyone have anything to say about the ACTUAL POST or is nitpicking and bitching about semantics just TOO irresistible?
let me simplify for you all: it’s obvious that people who are american identify with “south asian” and have no issues with it. the only people who DO have issues are those who are first gen or abroad. guess what? this is an AMERICAN/2nd gen blog. south asian it is.
When they push you to the ground and kick you in the head while shouting ‘fucking paki’, you can tell them that you are an Indian citizen with an Indian passport who has never been to Pakistan nor knows Pakistanis.
Do you think a mujahid on the subway would let me get off at the next stop before blowing up the car if I informed him of my sympathy for the Palestinians?
What kind of absurd tangent has this comment thread gone off on. The definition of ‘South Asian’? My father was born in PK, my mother in Inda. I have no idea if the Indian gvt would give me some sort of sepcial visa — not do I care. If you’re brown, you’re brown — whether Trinidadian, Hindustani, Fijian or Mirpuri.
“racist can’t tell the difference btwn indians and pakis”
I don’t care what racists think. If I am mistreated, the law will take its own course. I don’t walk around thinking what white people think of me, I know who I am.
Jeet, Only if you say swear allegiance to the mythical state of Palestine in Arabic 😉
Mirpuris in Britain consider themselves to be Punjabis and not Kashmiris. As somoneone pointed out earlier, their mother tongue is Punjabi and so is their culture. The Pakistanis though have done a good job of Punjabizing Kashmiris and soon all of Pakistan.
“Mirpuris in Britain consider themselves to be Punjabis and not Kashmiris.”
This is ironic as the Punjabis in Uk don’t consider the Mirpuris to be Punjabi and don’t get along with them.
“The Pakistanis though have done a good job of Punjabizing Kashmiris and soon all of Pakistan.”
I was under the impression that Pakistanis disavow Punjabi and refuse to teach it in their schools and that Punjabi is dying out while Urdu and Arabicization is occuring all over Pakistan.