The Mumbai attacks call for a collective Muslim outrage
By Bashir Goth
As I watched terrorists attacking Mumbai, India’s business capital, and playing havoc with the city’s famous landmarks, on November 26, I immediately remembered Hargeisa, capital of my country Somaliland, where almost a month before suicide bombers caused chaos by driving SUVs laden with explosives to the presidential palace, UNDP headquarters and the office of the Ethiopian Political Representative, killing scores of people and injuring many others. Just like India dubbed November 26 as their 9/11, my people in Somaliland have also dubbed their tragedy on 29/11 as Somaliland’s 9/11.
My first reaction to both tragedies was outrage. It is impossible to stay indifferent before such wanton killing of hundreds of innocent lives and destroying a country’s symbols of history and civilization. The terrorists’ choice of targets also says a lot about the venomous hate and the blind hostility that they have for human innovation, beauty and progress. Targeting Taj Mahal Palace and Tower hotel and the Trident-Oberoi was to hit India where it hurts most, the country’s sense of pride, just like their comrades did when they attacked New York’s Twin Towers.
Targeting western tourists, religious centers and public transport is also their way of maximizing the pain and delivering fear onto every world citizen’s doorstep. The reaction to this plague until now has been feeble and scattered on the world stage and almost indifferent at best and shameless schadenfreude at the worst in the main Muslim street.
The latest attacks in Mumbai should signal the end of world silence and inaction. It should stir a sense of outrage and anger in every peace loving human being. Any attempt to search for plausible justifications and motives just flies in one’s face when one finds that India is home to 150 million Muslims, representing the second-largest Muslim population in the world, after Indonesia's 200 million Muslims and larger than the entire population of Arab Muslims, which numbers around 140 million. So what kind of Muslim cause do these people claim to fight for when they endanger the lives of 150 million fellow Muslims and put them on the defensive to clear their name and that of their religion from the mess they have created.
READ MORE Awdalnews, onlineopinion
Global calls for action want for an answer to "what action?"
ReplyDeleteWhat stops an assassin?
What stops a suicide bomber?
What would interfere with a raid?
There's a cerebral component in the Islamic Small Wars that affords answers: intellectual confrontation; illumination through journalism; modernization in communication technologies, cultural educations, and language; etc. However, some 1400 years of mindful dogma and theory preserved in Arabic and passed along in other than English and "romance" languages make for a considerable global challenge.
Even in shared-language cultures, the central arguments and narrative lines laid down by Muhammad and recapitulated in books like The Sealed Nectar have evidently been used to undergird the latest unveiling of violence as a malevolent force of nature worked through mafia-like organizations.
hello, i am in agreement with the idea of peaceful change.. it would be a good thing if outrage was channeled into peaceful works would be the best solution. i guess anything with the word rage tends to me anyway to have the unwanted connotation and i wonder sometimes if it is the choice of wrds that confuse people. to confuse you and myself further i just finished commenting on your blog about president obama chosing his word correctly .. maybe the aswer is to both speak correctly and have the correct aswers to actually solve problems. my opion is to many problems end up in violence when people feel they are not being listened to or given choices they would actually wish to choose. maybe before people give people gift or try to help them its important they understand what it is the other thinks is important. i suspect this is what you were alluding to with your words on thr other article. i will look for your name or picture. and read your words in the future. i see you have to approve all comments on your blog. i do freedom of speech performance art and paint and do other art stuff as well as write a little. i appologize for my spelling i am dyslexic which is a learning disability i'm trying to educate people to what dyslexic writing looks like . a person can have wonderful things and high competent technical things to say but when you have mispellings the normal person assumes your drunk or an idiot loltake care have a great week artistkvip
ReplyDelete