Friday, July 08, 2005
London Bombings: The Muslim Reaction
For the record: The leadership of the Muslim world has condemned the London bombings:
All the Muslim governments condemned the bombings of London, including Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, along with Iran, as well as Turkey, and even Hamas and Hizbullah. Hamas has long foresworn violence against American and European targets, and has been holding talks with the UK, for which it has been condemned by the al-Qaeda-linked groups. Note that only at ArabicNews.com and the Chinese sites will the unadorned truth of these Arab and Muslim condemnations be reported in detail. The Financial Times mentioned it but then discussed a few negative individual responses in chat rooms, as though the Egyptian foreign minister was only as important as some guy in an internet cafe. All the Muslim governments are as vulnerable as London, and most of the Arab and Muslim capitals have been bombed by radical fundamentalists-- Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, Riyadh, Tehran, Jakarta, etc. Sometimes it has been the country's second city, as with Casablanca or Istanbul.UK imams condemned the London bombings:
Imams used Friday prayers to condemn the bombings and to tell Muslims they "have no reason to feel ashamed" and should go about their daily lives.And back in 1999, Afghan Muslim clerics issued a fatwa against Osama bin Laden for his murderous and inflammatory ways. (It seems as if they and the Clinton Administration were about the only ones who took the Osama threat seriously; the incoming Bush Administration sure didn't.) I'm doing this because I've discovered that people who should know better are not only repeating the old lie that Muslim leaders never condemned the 9/11 attacks (go here for a debunking of this lie), but regurgitating them to make them fit the London bombings.
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