Re: Terror in war

From: Mark Galeotti <markgaleotti_at_N-abAwyYanxkv6L1snHeFqMPMS_WbCZvEe6tt9yKcRIN12H4azM-Lk91eNYr9Hj>
Date: Thu, 23 Aug 2007 17:26:39 -0000

• In ImmoderateGloranthaQuest_at_yahoogroups.com, "Rob" <robert_m_davis_at_...> wrote:
  >
  > --- In ImmoderateGloranthaQuest_at_yahoogroups.com, "Mark Galeotti"
  > <markgaleotti_at_> wrote:
  > > Even ImmodGlorantha can't be allowed to become a forum for
  bigotry
  > > and religious hatred rooted in caricature and ignorance.
  >
  > Really Mark? You don't watch the news then? Or read papers? Or are
  > aware of 9/11? I bet you think that Hezbollah and Hamas are a bunch
  of
  > jolly good fellows who only want a land to call their own and are
  not
  > bent on the destruction of Israel and the anhilation of the Jewish
  race?

Actually, I do know a fair bit of what goes on. And yes, I am aware of 9/11 -- I spent a year seeing Ground Zero out of my living room window, just in case I might have forgotten. Those who carry out terrorism against innocents are vile, and that includes Hezbollah, et al. Of course, it is not uniquely Moslem. I was actually walking towards the NatWest tower in the City of Londonin 1992 when the IRA detonated a ton of ANFO explosive at its base.

> Polls showed
> that 35% of muslims surveyed thought they were justfied.

Well, there are all sorts of polls. Others put the figure at a lot less than 10%. But even if we accept the 35% figure, that is still a minority.

> Is it me that is making up the vile murder and mayhem being
perpetrated
> in Iraq on a daily basis? For heavens sake these people use
toddlers as
> bombs. Where is the humanity in that.

There is none (although I'm not aware of toddlers being used as bombs in Iraq). But the presence of inhuman people doing inhuman things in certain locations is hardly grounds for damning a whole faith -- or almost all of it -- as being murderous.

> So please don't try and smear me as a biggot or racist.

I see no smear. I'm not a Moslem; I'm not a terrorist fellowtraveller;  I condemn atrocities inspired by Al Qaeda every bit as much as those carried out by Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland or the predominantly-Hindu Tamil Tigers (incidentally the real 'fathers' of suicide bombing). I'm also unimpressed by much of the belief system of modern Islam. But to jump from the presence of a genuinely unpleasant strand within contemporary Islam to damning the whole religion is, to me, despicable. It's also dangerous. I've heard this kind of rationalisation too often, from Russians who use it to justify the thermobaric bombing of Chechen villages because 'they are a race of bandits' through to (a few, I would stress) US cops who don't want to respond to cases of shootings in poor, black districts because 'we might as well let the bad guys kill each other.'

I hope you're not a bigot or a racist. But I do think you've said something bigoted, and I hope that on reflection you accept that.

Mark