I’m still trying to get my head around this dickhead and his attempt to blow up Times Square, apart from being one of my favourite spots in the world, had this incompetent fool (something we should be thankful for) succeeded, the tragedy would have been immense. Countless innocent lives would have been lost, and our world – the so called Muslim nation – would descend further in the quagmire of international scorn and isolation.
Times Square Car Bomber Faisal Shahzad
U.S. District Judge Miriam Cedarbaum refused to hear him read it Monday, instead challenging the Pakistan-born American citizen to just say “what happened.”
In an unapologetic, matter-of-fact courtroom colloquy that followed, Shahzad offered chilling details about how he trained with the Pakistani Taliban to build bombs, then returned to the U.S. to launch an attack that would avenge attacks on Muslims by U.S. forces overseas.
“One has to understand where I’m coming from,” he said in an unusual departure from tightly scripted guilty pleas, with his defense attorney and prosecutors sitting in silence in federal court in Manhattan. “I consider myself … a Muslim soldier.”
AP
A Muslim what?
I think the dimwit should plead insanity. Ask his wife, she’d confirm, I’m sure.
The guy comes from a wealthy and privileged family. He was a relatively obscure and unnoteworthy student in both his native Pakistan and in the USA, but he was lucky to land a job and gain a “green card” to stay in the country he claims to have become to hate. The bitch got full US citizenship 3 months before he decided to blow it up.
And he calls himself a “muslim soldier.” I’m not sure if this idiom comes from Islam, but colloquially we have a saying which states that only a dog flips his dish after he’s eaten. That typifies the ungrateful, and disloyal, and turncoat. To me, Faisal Shahzad is nothing less than the definition of these terms and an awful lot more.
Why?
We have to ask ourselves why would people like Faisal Shahzad and hundreds more from all strata of our society succumb to this meaningless violence? How is it condoned and why is it permitted to fester amongst us?
I used to think that its simply because of a person’s ignorance of “the true interpretation of Islam” that allows him to veer away from the correct path. But incidents like these shake my belief in that premise, leading to think of the possibility that it’s not the interpretation that’s awry, but maybe, just maybe some of the fundamentals are wrong, or maybe at least are mis-applied or even no longer relevant.
Could it be that the literal interpretation of the Quran without putting it in a proper frame of reference is at the source of these troubles which we are facing on a daily basis? Not a day passes, it seems, without one act of terror or another being launched at innocents around the world. All for what? To establish the supremacy of Islam. To build an Islamic super-state. To re-establish the Khalifate of old, completely and willfully forgetting the intrinsic difference of the world 1500 years ago and the present day.
We have to stop making excuses.
We have to come down on these terrorists and their incubators like a ton of bricks. Let’s recognise the very source of the problem and annihilate it. Not by continuing to put on the kiddie cotton gloves, but remove them from our midst as a surgeon does with cancerous tumours.
How?
There are no short term solutions of course. We have to change mentalities and modes of thinking and this will take a long time, generations probably, but we have to start now!
I believe a modern education system is critical. Emphasis on humanities, science and engineering. Emphasising and encouraging critical thinking without the “red lines” of not criticising religion or state must be taught and nurtured. Criticism must be encouraged and the protection of people’s right to information, and ensure the freedom of the press, inculcate accountability and transparency and inshrine those principles with the milk a babe drinks. Only when these take place and people start to not just accept them as a given, but fight for their protection with their lives, will we put a stop to this spreading cancer.
Yes it is a difficult proposition and I know that huge waves of opposition will be raised. But I can’t see another way of dealing with these acts of orchestrated violence. We tried to blame them on anything and everything, but never approached the real cause.
It’s time to call a spade a spade and be done with the literal interpretation of old texts and apply the spirit of the religion. I’m sure this is what the essence of Islam or any other religion is in any case.
