Hey Mutineers – been on the road for last week & a half and I’ve got a couple of posts in the coffer… Still, headlines covering the break up of the suicide bomb cell in Madrid were worth a quick post. Why? Because it’s the first bust-up I’ve seen where all the terrorists were desi –
The judge identified the three alleged suicide bombers as Mohamed Shoaib, Mehmooh Khalib and Imran Cheema. He said they had arrived in Barcelona from Pakistan some time between October and mid-January.
…Moreno identified the ideologues in the new alleged plot as Maroof Ahmed Mirza, 38, and Mohammad Ayud Elahi Bibi, 63. He said the former was the main religious leader and organizer of the cell.
The five other men sent to jail were named as Mohamed Tarik, Qadeer Malik, Hafeez Ahmed, Roshan Jamal Khan and Shaib Iqbal.
Nine are Pakistanis; Khan is Indian.
The implications are interesting and many.
UPDATE: 2 of ’em have been released including the Indian dude(s) –
Authorities in Spain are understood to have released two persons, including an Indian national, who were among 14 persons arrested in that country for allegedly planning to carry out terror strikes there.Roshan Juman Khan, a Mumbai resident, was released on Thursday, sources said though an official word from the Spanish authorities was awaited.
The second person, Sarosh Ali Mohammed, was released yesterday with the Spanish authorities in Madrid saying he hails from Hyderabad. It was not clear whether it is the city in India or Pakistan.
Hat tip to Marl Balou for the pointer…
I guess it’s more difficult to understand because the notion just sounds so ludicrous, especially because it’s on such a large scale.
Aside… I think radical Islam (as expressed by local imams, leaflets, etc.) really preys on the insecurities of Muslim kids in Western countries who have to struggle with being Muslim in the West. I dunno, I find it troubling whenever people from any religion compete to see who is ‘more [insert religion here].’
Let’s just keep in mind that the best way to beat the extremists is to support “regular” Muslims–think Northern Alliance in Afghanistan, Anbar Awakening groups in Iraq, Hariri et al in Lebanon, etc. It’s really wrong, silly and counter-productive to turn it into an anti-Muslim thing tout court.
101 · nala said
Don’t Hindus and Sikhs face the same struggles? And don’t racial minorities such as Blacks face even more stigma in the West? How come youths from these communities don’t embrace terrorism?
Nope: the shias did in Beirut, and quite spectacularly
Well, let’s be glad they/we don’t–some might, under different circumstances. You would have been wrong to demonize all Irish people back when the IRA setting off bombs in London, no? Let’s not make the enemy bigger than they are by trying to demonize all Muslims. We need the help of the non-extemist ones–they are best-positioned to eliminate the extremists.
102 · rob said
Problem is that even these “regular” Muslims have views that are incompatible with Western democracy (Hariri and Sunni bourgeosie in Beirut is an exception). These groups support pretty fundamentalist inerpretations of the Koran even if they stop short of supporting Al Qaeda.
Moderate Muslims in the West seem disinterested in combating extremist Islam and more interested in condeming Western society for how they react to extremist Islam. I don’t see moderate Muslims taking back control of mosques or madrassahs. They’re more likely to criticize people like Ibn Warraq and Ayan Hirsi Ali than criticize the actual terrorists.
Yeah, but so what? It’s not a first-order concern of mine that countries have “Western democracy,” as long as they’re not sending extremists to attack other peoples. Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
I certainly agree there are differences in scale (although the massacred Christians and Muslims in India might disagree). I guess it is my atheist variant of the glass houses principle and what you bear moral responsibility for, since you have a proximate ability to change it. That, and the fact that if you choose to turn a blind eye to the same strains of illiberalism in your own religion, while railing about the manifestations in others, you ignore the trajectories of history that have shown that all religions have been fully capable of atrocities when they’ve felt threatened.
As for whether Hindus and Sikhs face the same strugges of “being Muslim in the west” (!!!), I certainly hope that we don’t have to face the results of the fear mongering alluded to in all those questions about “why do these people who do evil have to look like us?” that constantly rear their head in these discussions.
Uh – well there’s only been case (that I know of) of Muslim kids raised in the West who carried out terrorist acts (London tube bombings). There’s an organized network of extremely conservative Islam that has lots of oil money that it throws at mosques all over the world, so that might be one reason why that ever happened, though the connection between Wahhabism and terrorist groups isn’t set in stone either. I agree with some of your points, but I think when you generalize it to statements like ‘how come youths from these communities don’t embrace terrorism’ the conversation doesn’t go anywhere.
105 · rob said
No one said “all Muslims” are terrorists. But it seems that the extremist Muslims are the loudest and most active segment. Very few Muslims as a percentage of the population carry out suicide bombings. But a larger (yet still small) percentage sympathize with suicide bomings. And an ever larger percent sympathize with the goals of Al Qaeda (Islamic domination over most of the world). CNN has the polls here showing how more than 40% of Pakistanis approve of Al Qaeda and Bin Laden.
The vast majority of Muslims are not terrorist, but a very large percentage are sympathetic to radical Islam.
Nope: the shias did in Beirut, and quite spectacularly
Except that was also not targeted at civilians…
The Middle East would benefit more from some more “bourgeois” than from some democracy in the short run, IMHO. Think development paths of S. Korea, Taiwan . . . .
Wow, I am starting to channel Jeane Kirkpatrick!
108 · Rahul said
I haven’t seen you condemn the atrocities of your fellow atheists.You demand Hindus who discuss radical Islam condemn the intolerance other Hindus:
But you seem to attack Hindus everyday for extremism while never condeming the atrocities of your “coreligionists” (Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot). Whats good for the goose is good for the gander.
Ah, the standard religious misdirection, that claims that Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot were motivated by their atheism. I see they teach you well in god school, JGandhi.
So would the Hindus of Kashmir and Nagaland, Tripura, Meghalaya, as well as the lower-caste Hindus that were killed by Muslim mobs during the Gujarat riots. …I don’t want to get into some bizarre pissing match, and I agree with you on a lot of things. My only point in bringing this up is to wonder why you can’t just agree without this snideness?
I agree. But all religions don’t have the same rhetoric or reasons for that rhetoric.
Islam is a lot more stigmatized post-9/11 than Hinduism or Sikhism ever were in the U.S., but it can be isolating to grow up as a member of the latter two religions as well. I’m not sure what the exclamation marks are for?
115 · Rahul said
Whats up with nuances and evasive responses? Hmmm…you still haven’t condemned your fellow atheists. Oh and I don’t recall any condemnations of Congress party massacring Sikhs, Nadigram and the persecuation of Falun Gong. It seems to be atheists are wreaking more havoc than the Hindutva movement yet you expect me to condemn my coreligionists and at the same time balk at condemning yours.
And of course you do know that Hindutva movement was founded by an atheist? Wow, you better get started. You got a whole lot of condemning to do.
In a lame attempt to channel the sadly-missing Razib, let me say, “yeah, but it’s pretty isolating to grow up anywhere as a non-tard, too.”
I think we should listen to what the so called “terrorists” demand rather than peddling our own assumptions. This is a nice link describing the history of statements by Bin Laden and Al-qaeda. link
I read Osama bin laden’s declaration of “jihad” of 1996. The surprising thing is that (if I remember right) he mentions ‘Muslims’ are persecuted all over the world and mentions Assam of India.
True. 🙂
JGandhi, what can I say? I find it hard to condemn Pol Pot because I actually worship the images of Pol Pot that I keep in the network of underground tunnels that I have dug in my backyard.
You should check your recall then.
A religious nationalist by any other name is still a religious nationalist, and still stinks.
I was just making the point that scale is great, but a few thousands is not a negligible absolute number either.
Ok.
I was countering the response to your statement, with which I agree. You specifically talked about the stigma of being “Muslim” in the west, not being brown, which is what the response seemed to be for.
I think Bin laden was referring to the Assam’ 1983 massacre of bangladeshi migrants by ULFA.
I don’t think of any reason to attack Spain, (after the last attack they have removed their troops from Iraq), unless it is for re-establishing “Al-andalus”. Arab Moslems conquered Spain and ruled over it from 712 to late 1400s.
Here is a link to Al-Qaeda’s goal of (re)taking Spain.
You might also want to consider at your leisure why I am not asking “my fellow Hindus” to condemn the LTTE or the naxalites but rather the Hindutva nutjobs, or what Nandigram and the Falun Gong have to do with religiously motivated intolerance.
If we can’t forget absolute numbers, can we go digging into the past and find fodder for the persecution complex espoused by Hindutva then? Not that I think that the number of lives makes a difference when it… what makes a difference is how much power, on an international scale, the people who care about you have. I actually wouldn’t be surprised if the number of people killed by religious violence in India in the past 20 years alone outnumbers the number of people killed by terrorist attacks in Western countries in the same time period. But the latter matter more geopolitically because they’re less expected, and their lives matter more on that level. (Sad, but true). Anyway, my initial objection to your statement was because I felt like you were bringing it up in a flippant manner.
Ok, that wasn’t my intent but I see that how it came across that way.
And I understand why some conflicts might be considered more important than others because of the geopolitical impact, that is not what I am complaining about.
I have never made the argument that the Islamic terrorists are justified or that past wrongs vindicate current revenge and vigilantism, or using the numbers to justify any such claim.
Shit, what I meant to say was, ‘Not that I think that the number of lives is insignificant’
Didn’t mean to indicate you were – I was thinking more of how right-wing Hindus justify their hatred with stories of persecution of Hindus from centuries ago. We rightly think it’s loony, as we should the claims for an Islamic caliphate stretching to Iberia because it used to be ruled by the Moors.
To tell the truth (which is politically incorrect), these folks are making the lives of many brown people (at least young males) who live in the west (irrespective of whether they are DBDs or ABDs or EBDs (European born desis)) quite difficult. I don’t think there is any immediate solution to the problem. Let’s just hope that none of these guys get through.
One way to turn them off is to ask if it is OK for the Dalits to take their revenge. 🙂
I always thought it was the Moops.
The reasons and justifications for attacks always change to suit the Islamic terror groups. It wouldn’t matter at this point if all Western troops were withdrawn from Iraq. Reasons are always available from their vast array of “mix and match” injustices against the Islamic world from the present or a 1000 years ago.
I don’t know… I just don’t think we should get into this ‘Don’t condemn acts of violence committed in the name of other religions before you condemn those committed in the name of yours first’… for one, it actually kind of reduces the terrorist acts committed by Al Qaeda & related groups to religious acts, when there are other factors at play, and more importantly, it’s something that affects society as a whole… would we really ask Muslims horrified by how Muslims are treated in India to first condemn this act of terrorism, and that act of terrorism, committed in the name of Islam, before letting them feel horrified? I’m horrified by how Hindus are treated in many Islamic countries, but I know that Hindus aren’t perfect either (you just need to look at India as an example).
And what about atheist neocons like Manju? Who would they have to condemn first? 🙂
Yes!! This is just the latest cynical power-play by a bunch of thugs (think communism, fascism, KKK)–there have been plenty of Muslim eras/kingdoms/countries in the past 1300 years that haven’t felt the need to do this sort of stuff.
Like what?. Can you explain the other factors behind Pakistanis who have settled in Spain to indulge in a suicide attack against Spain?.
Sure, that’s easy. It’s not just religion, b/c most Muslims in the world (by a huge margin) wouldn’t do that. The few who do hew to a political fantasy that the “weak,” “decadent” West is ripe for the picking, and that the spoils will be theirs. No particlarized grievance, really, just the age-old (all-to-human) lust for power dressed up with some quasi-religous carrying-on. No reason to sympathise with it, just because it’s explainable.
Nala, the reason I put “terrorists” in quotes is the same reason I’d put “war” and “innocent civilians” in quotes. These are highly loaded terms which change meaning depending on who is using them and in what context and to what political end, which makes them essentially meaningless. Let’s not forget that we pay taxes to the only government which has ever dropped an atomic bomb, which maintained 10 years of sanctions that were responsible for the death of 500,000 Iraqi children, and arms, trains, and finances paramilitaries that terrorize the countryside and does contain people who explicity state their intent to dominate the world.
(A pax upon thee, indeed.)
Look, if you look over the span of human history, it’s not unusual for various groups, or sub-parts of groups, to go “crazy” over (in historical terms) short periods of time. Why is S. Korea rich and pleasant and N. Kora poor and nasty? It’s not b/c of centuries-long diffences between the cultures of the different ends of the Korean penninsula. It’s because short-term political events have had decades-long consequences. If you parachuted down to Earth and started thinking every current socio-political-economic difference is due to some fundamental cultural differences, you would be pretty whacked-out in your analysis of Korea. So too with Islamic extremism. Of course, none of this means the Islamic extremists of today aren’t dangerous and in need of being pulled and/or pushed into irrelevance.
Can you explain?. I just wanted to know the “other” factors behind Pakistanis settled in Spain to attack Spain. Your above statement is vague and does not really offer an insight outside of religion.
106 · JGandhi said
Let’s not forget that the US is not just reacting to extremist Islam, the US gave birth to it.
109 · nala said
But there is a demonstrable link between Wahhabist Saudi Arabia and the American oiligarchy.
That’s right. When they were fighting the Soviets, the same “jihadis” were the good guys. Since “1984” has already been referred to in this blog, this looks like a classic case of “Eurasia” and “Eastasia” fighting “Oceania”. 🙂
Some small group of political agitators has decided (wrongly, I think, but that doesn’t mean that they haven’t decided it’s right) that now is a good time to “strike” Spain in order to precipitate (they think) some sort of massive political/demographic shift in the short-term, that will be in their interests. Look, don’t get mad because that sounds like a fantasy–read their stuff–this is what they say. They’re working off of a historically-invoked quasi-religious template in which–in a technogically quite backward era, mind you–the Arabs burst out of Arabia, taking Damascus in 635 AD and less than 80 years later (!!) were in Spain. Who, sitting around the hearth in their cottage in 620 AD would have believed that?
Again, that doesn’t seem like a factor “outside of religion”. Sorry to be nit picking.
yes, we’ve heard that one before . The model followed in Afghanistan was what the O.S.S (the WW II precursor to the CIA) used against the Japanese:
A lot of the CIA’s Cold War strategies used O.S.S techniques. Some would argue that the CIA still uses outmoded Cold War/WW II thinking in fighting a uniformless/stateless enemy like Islamic terror cells. To keep quoting that the US created the Taliban doesn’t give the whole picture as historically those techniques had worked in WW II. But creating the Taliban was unlike creating resistance fighters in WWII. Yes, am sure there are plenty of people now who wish that we had let the Soviets have free reign in Afghanistan. More than a few ex-Soviet Generals must have been smiling on 9/11.
No problem–we both seem to be sincere, but speaking past each other in some fashion. I guess I take it as a given that the political conquest of much of the historical cradle(s) of human civilization in less than 100 years is an inherently political/economic event, while you seem to think it’s reducible to religion. Tell me more about what would, for you, count as factor(s) “outside of religion” and perhaps we can bear down on a mutually intelligible (the fault lies as much with me as with you, I’m sure) discussion. 🙂
Ok – I’m not exactly gung ho America, but this is a little bit too much relativism for me to stomach. I don’t believe that those terms are essentially meaningless. Various international bodies recognize most countries as countries, and so when those countries’ militaries engage in combat they’re at war. But when terrorist groups who have been recognized as such by various international bodies (that includes the EU condemning the LTTE, the UN Security Council & NATO condemning Al Qaeda) launch attacks on noncombatants on ‘enemy’ soil, that’s by definition terrorism. I know that even various international bodies are not objective and influenced by geopolitics, and that their decisions are politically tinged, and I know that the U.S. government is certainly guilty of a lot of things. But I don’t think that it should have to mean that the U.S. as a country loses its sovereignty and all groups become equal actors on a world stage. It’s an established democratic country, people responsible for war crimes should be on trial, but it doesn’t make terms like ‘terrorist’ meaningless…
If regular Americans are culpable for the actions of the U.S. government because they pay taxes to it, does that make regular Muslims spiritually culpable for the actions of Islamic terrorists because they worship the same god? What if they donate money to a religious organization and that money gets sent which way and that and finally gets used to help buy some explosives to kill “innocent” “civilians”?
Fair enough, but let’s be sure to not use placeholders like “democracy” or “terrorism” to obscure underlying reality. I could imagine a situation in which a “terrorist” attack against a “democracy” might be morally justified. I think you could, too. That said, I don’t think any of today’s “terrorist” groups are near that line, in my opinion.