Children of Beslan

[Rebar]

I just watched this documentary on HBO:

In Russia, Sept. 1 is the Day of Knowledge, a joyous annual event marking the start of the new school year. But Knowledge Day 2004 was different at School No. 1 in Beslan: A group of heavily armed rebel extremists stormed the school, holding more than a thousand children and adults hostage in a sweltering gymnasium for three days. The harrowing siege ended Sept. 3 in a series of explosions and hail of gunfire that killed some 350 people - half of them children.

http://www.hbo.com/docs/programs/childrenbeslan/index.html

If you needed more evidence that we need to fight, and win, the global war on terror, then you need to watch this. It's entirely told by the surviving children, heartbreaking doesn't even come close to describing it.

And never forget, it can happen here.

 

[GunsnRovers]

I need to catch this. I thought it didn't start until next week.

 

[Mike P.]

Beslan was a terrible tradgedy. I still wouldn't want the US to get involved in a Russian-Chechnyan conflict. We are over extended as is in Afgahnistan and Iraq with very little to show for our efforts.

 

[Eghad]

The "War on Terrorism" will never be won.......through the military alone.

till you eradicate the conditions that breed terrorists.

 

[Rebar]

till you eradicate the conditions that breed terrorists.

The condition that breeds terrorists - is our existance. And I won't be "eradicated" quietly.

 

[shootinstudent]

The condition that breeds terrorists - is our existance.

Who is we? I don't see how this works. We exist, therefore there are terrorists.

How did we exist before terrorism, if this is the case?


I agree with Eghad. The conditions that breed terrorists need to be changed. But that means something in different from Chechnya in Iraq, from in Saudi Arabia, from in Pakistan....etc. IMO, lumping all terrorism into one mass of terrorists is short sighted. People join these psycho movements for different (wrong) reasons, and I think any solution is going to have to address that.

 

[dolanp]

Yes our existence is the problem, our existence in other people's countries.

 

[Rebar]

Yes our existence is the problem, our existence in other people's countries

Not according to Osama bin Laden:

(v) The removal of these governments is an obligation upon us, and a necessary step to free the Ummah, to make the Shariah the supreme law and to regain Palestine. And our fight against these governments is not separate from out fight against you.

We have to abandon Israel and allow them to destroy it:

It is to this religion that we call you; the seal of all the previous religions. It is the religion of Unification of God, sincerity, the best of manners, righteousness, mercy, honour, purity, and piety. It is the religion of showing kindness to others, establishing justice between them, granting them their rights, and defending the oppressed and the persecuted. It is the religion of enjoining the good and forbidding the evil with the hand, tongue and heart. It is the religion of Jihad in the way of Allah so that Allah's Word and religion reign Supreme. And it is the religion of unity and agreement on the obedience to Allah, and total equality between all people, without regarding their colour, sex, or language.

And we all have to convert to Islam.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/worldview/story/0,11581,845725,00.html
Plenty more demands, demands that have nothing to do with being in other countries, are in the letter.

Simply put, the terrorists are fighting a war with Western Culture and values, ie, us. To this end they will do anything, up to and including the cold-blooded murder of innocent women and children.

As amply demonstrated in Beslan.

 

[shootinstudent]

As amply demonstrated in Beslan.

It is pure evil. But it's also pretty much unrelated to Osama bin Laden. The Chechen rebels do not speak Bin Laden's language, do not share a culture anything remotely like his, and come from a population that has been subjected to the horrors of Russian communism for decades. Russia is not a bastion of "Western Cultures and values" by any stretch, so I don't see how hating American freedom would lead Chechens to attack Russians.

Their attacks are atrocious just the same, but posting something about Bin Laden really gives little to no insight into what drives the Chechen terrorists.

 

[Rebar]

Their attacks are atrocious just the same, but posting something about Bin Laden really gives little to no insight into what drives the Chechen terrorists.

The are driven by the same ideology - hate of anyone or anything not Islamic.

Chechens have been found fighting in Bosnia and Iraq, also some of the terrorists of Beslan were Arabs. In fact I remember reading that the Marines in Falluja found the Chechens were the toughest of all the terrorists there.

 

[butch50]

Some people just don't want to believe that evil exists. They want to believe that evil acts are the consequences of specific circumstances or conditions. They want to believe that by changing the environment from which evil sprang, that evil will disappear.

Evil exists, always has, and always will. It exists independent of circumstances or conditions - change the circumstances and conditions that you believe causes evil, and evil will still be there. What do columbine and Beslan have in common? Did those kids in Columbine come from the same circumstance and conditions as the terrorists at Beslan? No sir.

Fighting evil is a lot like fighting computer viruses - a war that will never be won, only fought and fought and fought. We will never defeat evil all the way back to its source. What we can do is to fight it back as far and as often as realistically possible.

Give it a thought - evil is real and it is independent of circumstances.

 

[shootinstudent]

The are driven by the same ideology - hate of anyone or anything not Islamic.

I'm going to have to disagree. I think having been ruled and then invaded by Russia repeatedly has a lot more to do with why Chechens are killing Russians than with Islam. Why aren't Chechens attacking America or England, or China? I can see a few radicals getting drawn into Iraq....but I haven't found any evidence of substantial interest in it in Chechnya. I'd like to see what information you have on the extent of Chechen participation in Iraq.

As for Bosnia, muslims from all over the world went, and rightly so. You would do well to avoid using that as an example of "islamo-terrorism", because what was happening to Muslims in Bosnia at the hands of Russian-backed Serbs was absolutely atrocious. It was every bit as criminal as what Osama bin Laden has been doing.

butch50: No argument there. Evil is Evil, period. But saying "ah, Bin Laden is doing what he is doing for the same reason that Chechens are doing it!" does not help us get one iota closer to rooting it out. I see a real tendency to mass the Islamic world into one huge group of turban wearing, arab speaking types....it is not. It is as diverse, if not more diverse, than the Christian world, and an effective approach to combatting Islamist nutcases is going to have to take that into account.

 

[Rebar]

The mistake you're making is thinking OBL is the root of this terrorism. He is but one branch of a tree that's been growing for a thousand years. Islam has always been at war with the West and it's judeo/christian foundation.

As for the Chechens:

In recent months, radical Islamist Chechen leaders such as Shamil Basayev, along with Osama bin Laden, have been "clear" about wanting to "set Russia on fire," says Michael Radu, a terrorism expert at the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. "This is not an Al Qaeda operation: These are autonomous groups," he says. "It's not like bin Laden wrote the checks. But they are synchronized ideologically and strategically."

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0907/p01s02-woeu.html

Since late June, Chechen terrorists have been coming to Iraq to join the anti-American offensive.

http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=542

 

[shootinstudent]

He is but one branch of a tree that's been growing for a thousand years. Islam has always been at war with the West and it's judeo/christian foundation.

This is demonstrably false. Your claim is not supported by any serious look at History whatsoever. The last time the US had trouble with Muslims, before the Arab-Israeli conflicts, was in the 18th century-and the problem was settled by treaty. That's 200 years of peace with Muslim nations in the middle east. Here's a list of treaties between the US and Muslim nations, all signed when the US was at her weakest:

Arab treaties:
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/diplomacy/barbary/bar1796t.htm

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/diplomacy/barbary/bar1795t.htm

http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/diplomacy/barbary/bar1786t.htm

and here's one in Turkish:
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/diplomacy/barbary/bar1797t.htm

Saudi Arabia's population fought for T.E. Lawrence of Arabia-Against another Muslim nation, Turkey. Turks and Arabs have a long standing, deep rooted hatred for one another.

Malaysia, pre-split India, and Indonesia all had large numbers of Muslim groups allied with the Colonial powers. One of the most famous Islamic scholars of India and Pakista, Abdullah Yusuf Ali, supported the Colonial government for his whole life. The Muslims in the Melacca straights cooperated readily with Dutch and British colonial officials.

The Turks allied at one point with Germany. They also waged brutal wars of conquest against...you guessed it, the Arabs. See "Lawrence of Arabia." Not exactly a history of "let's kill all westerners!", is it?

Like I've asked before: Where are the Islamic insurgents in Singapore? Why aren't they revolting against the evil western style government that singapore has? Hmmmm.....

Virtually every single terror attack in modern times on the US has been perpetrated by an Arab extremist group. Arabs are less than 15 percent of the world Muslim population, and their clerics are generally ignored for home-grown Muslim clerics in all non-Arab states. I'd like to you explain how it is that, if all of Islam is anti-western, terrorism has only been a real problem for the past 30 years, and at that, only at the doing of a smaller percentage of an already small percentage of the world muslim population.

It's this kind of "they're all the same and have been for a 1000 years" thinking that is getting propagandized by extremists on both sides: the west and the east. Terrorists want you to believe that they speak for Islam, because it makes their positions look more secure to the west. It's effectively a bluff that enhances their leverage against Western populations. They can cause more fear because they've managed to convince westerners that all of the billion real muslims support them. Likewise, people with persecution complexes in the west have done the same.

 

[Rebar]

Your claim is not supported by any serious look at History whatsoever.

That is so breathtakenly mistaken, I don't even know where to start.

History is so replete with wars and battles between the West and Islam, it could fill a library to describe them all.

 

[shootinstudent]

Rebar,

History is replete with Christian nations attacking and colonizing the rest of the world also. Does that mean that Christians are on a mission to kill or convert the entire planet, and that Christianity cannot coexist with any other religion?

The battles you describe were standard fare, across all cultures, for the time. And then there's all the history I cited...how are all of those facts possible, if Islam cannot coexist with other religions?

 

[Rebar]

Does that mean that Christians are on a mission to kill or convert the entire planet, and that Christianity cannot coexist with any other religion?

What nonsense, it's the religous duty of moslems to conquer and convert the entire world, it says so right in the koran! Islam cannot co-exist equally with other religions, it say so right in the koran!

You cannot compare Christianity with Islam. They are fundimentally different in just about every aspect. Our Western culture is based on the judeo/christian tradition, the Islamic culture is a profoundly anti-Western philosophy. The only reason Western culture survives today, is because we stopped them first at the battle of Tours, then the battle of Lepanto. Look those up, it seems you haven't been studying all your history.

 

[shootinstudent]

What nonsense, it's the religous duty of moslems to conquer and convert the entire world, it says so right in the koran!

Read Surah 2.256. No, this is not and never has been a duty of all Muslims. If you're going to make claims about what a religion teaches, you should take pains to actually learn it first. And history bears out the religious teaching...until after WWII, christians and jews lived in Muslim societies without a problem. No Muslim empire, not a single one, had a policy of "kill every christian and jew who doesn't convert." Imposing extra taxes was the most they did. Can you say the same for the Christian empires of the corresponding centuries? Look up what Charlemagne did to the Saxons if you think so...

If you want a modern example, go read up on what the Christian serbs were doing to Muslim women and children in Bosnia during the 90's. Does the fact that some christians tried to wipe out every muslim they could find mean that all Christians are bloodthirsty killers who want to kill all muslims? If not, I'd like to know why the fact that there are some muslims who kill christians means that all of Islam is anti-Christian.

The only reason Western culture survives today, is because we stopped them first at the battle of Tours, then the battle of Lepanto.

And likewise, the only reason Islamic culture exists today is that Saladin destroyed the crusaders at Hattin in 1187. And if the Ottomans hadn't remained so advanced, the Colonial thievery that the Europeans engaged in would've ripped the middle east apart like it did Africa. You should look up the dates on when the French began and ended their colonization of North Africa. Another fine example of a christian people not bothering anyone because Jesus teaches peace, right?

Ironically, Muslims also in a roundabout way saved Christianity...if it weren't for Muslim armies cooperating in the struggle against the Mongols, the Mongols would've reached Europe with plenty of time to conquer it before the deaths of Ghengis and Kublai.

 

[Rebar]

Prophet, make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites and deal rigorously with them. Hell shall be their home: an evil fate.

When the sacred months are over slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them.

Slay them wherever you find them. Drive them out of the places from which they drove you. Idolatry is worse than carnage.

God's curse be upon the infidels! Evil is that for which they have bartered away their souls. To deny God's own revelation, grudging that He should reveal His bounty to whom He chooses from among His servants! They have incurred God's most inexorable wrath. An ignominious punishment awaits the unbelievers.

O you who believe! do not take the unbelievers for friends rather than the believers; do you desire that you should give to Allah a manifest proof against yourselves?

They desire that you should disbelieve as they have disbelieved, so that you might be (all) alike; therefore take not from among them friends until they fly (their homes) in Allah's way; but if they turn back, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them, and take not from among them a friend or a helper.

When your Lord revealed to the angels: I am with you, therefore make firm those who believe. I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.

Fight against them (non-Muslims) until idolatry is no more and God's religion reigns supreme. But if they desist, fight none except the evil-doers."

Fighting is obligatory for you, much as you dislike it. But you may hate a thing although it is good for you, and love a thing although it is bad for you. God knows, but you know not.

I'm sure we could quote koran verses all day. The simple fact is, Islam is a profoundly anti-Western religion, a facist system of total theocratic control over the world. It divides the world into two camps: "Dar al Islam" - the world of Islam, and "Dar al Harb" - the world of war.

Islam is a religion of peace - if you're a muslem living in a muslem land. If not, then you live in the world of war, and then it is not a religion of peace, it's the religion of murdering women and children, of lies and deceit, of pushing back the infidel and claiming more lands for Islam, of jihad and mayrterdom.

I'm sure you'll criticize my Islamic scholarship, but I'll point out that it's not just my interpretation, the whahabbi movement came to those conclusions long before I did, that's the meaning behind OBL letter, and plenty before them also. I'm very sure the Chechens who murdered those children were true believers, and they did it in full accordance with koranic values.

 

[shootinstudent]

I'm sure you'll criticize my Islamic scholarship, but I'll point out that it's not just my interpretation, the whahabbi movement came to those conclusions long before I did, that's the meaning behind OBL letter, and plenty before them also.

I won't just criticize yours (which is from a website that lists out of context quotes). I also critcize Wahabi theology, which is unfaithful to traditional islamic teaching. Wahabi psychos are loathed by the adherents of the traditional four Sunni fiqh, and they represent a miniscule percentage of the world muslim population. The Wahabi are the muslim world's equivalent of the "Church of Jesus Christ Christian" that the Aryan Nations' runs. An interesting historical note: Wahabism wasn't founded as an anti-western splinter group. It was founded (and supported by the British!) in response to the Turkish imperial occupation of the Arabian peninsula. The early Wahabis actually embraced British invasion as method of kicking out the, in their eyes, evil Turks.

This is an excellent article by a traditional Muslim Sheikh that spells out why most muslims reject Wahabi extremism:

http://www.meforum.org/article/14

Every single one of the quotes you listed is directed at the Arab tribes who were trying to kill Muhammad at the time, and all of them are followed directly by verses that say the equivalent of "but if they stop fighting or threatening you and offer terms of peace, then you must accept them."

For example, this quote of yours:

When the sacred months are over slay the idolaters wherever you find them. Arrest them, besiege them, and lie in ambush everywhere for them.

Is from Surah 9:5. It is followed by Surah 9:6, which says:

If one amongst the Pagans Ask thee for asylum, Grant it to him, So that he may hear the Word of God; and then escort him to where he can be secure

That's in the Koran literally one sentence after the quote you posted. What's more, is this is true for every one of your quotes. If you go to a site where the Surah and verse are listed, you will be able to verify that for yourself. Or if you won't...I'll be happy to pm you with the corresponding commands to make peace with the warring Arab tribes for each of the verses you listed.

Btw: Christians and Jews are NEVER referred to as pagans in the Koran.

As for the verses you posted that say not to trust christians and jews with your lives and religion...given the time period, that is an entirely acceptable teaching. Muslims were slaughtered outright wherever captured by Christians. So, I think it's not surprising.

Edited to add:

"Dar al Harb" - the world of war

The phrase that defines Wahabism is better: "Qitab at-Tahweed", the mantra started by Al Wahab himself.