THERE WAS A MUSLIM WHO TOOK HIS 8-YEAR OLD SON TO SYRIA. HE CUTS OFF A PERSON’S HEAD AND POSTS A PICTURE OF HIS SON HOLDING THE CHOPPED HEAD WITH A NOTE SAYING “PROUD OF MY SON . . .”. MUSLIMS ARE SO BARBARIC.
This, among many other abhorring atrocities have been widely condemned by every Islamic leader, scholar and infinite number of ordinary Muslims worldwide and yet this does not excuse people from forming biased views against Muslims and Islam.
There are plenty of Christians, non-Christians or Atheist psychopaths out there who commit inhumane, psychopathic acts of violence but these are never associated with their faith or lack of it. Why?
Then there is the issue of drones and carpet bombings. A hundred times more innocent civilians (including children, aid workers and journalists) die in drone attacks and F16 bombs, in an absolutely grotesque and inhumane way (not only having their heads chopped off but limbs torn to bits). Yet where is the condemnation from ordinary citizens of the West for these barbaric acts of state terrorism regularly visited upon Muslim civilian population?
Worse still, people ask, why are Muslims angry?
Therefore, 99.97 percent of the Muslim population cannot be held responsible for the actions of persons and groups representing 50,000 (my personal unscientific, well exaggerated estimate) who joined groups like ISIS (or whatever next they mutate into), accounting for less than 0.03 percent of the Muslim population worldwide, killing innocent civilians, aid workers and journalists.
WHAT’S WITH THE HEAD-CHOPPING FASCINATION AMONG MUSLIMS THEN?
During the Crusades, Christians used to catapult the severed heads of Muslim fighters over the walls of besieged towns, as a form of “threat display”. (Source: The slow-motion wreck of American values – Salon.com, 22 Sept 2004, Salon.com). Japanese soldiers training for action during the World War II were deliberately de-sensitised and shown how to decapitate living prisoners. (Source: Don’t underestimate Islamic State. More atrocities are on their way, 21 July 2016, Abdel Bari Atwan, The Guardian). In 2006, US soldier Steven Green, along with four colleagues gang-raped, then murdered 14-year-old Abeer Qassim al-Janabi in front of her parents and siblings (who were then also killed), and said this at his trial: “I didn’t think of Iraqis as human”. The key singular tactic appears to be de-humanizing “the other” so that you are completely “desensitised” from an act of violence. (Source: Former US soldier guilty of rape found hanged – Al Jazeera English, Feb 18, 2014, Aljazeera.com). Evidently, abhorring violence is not limited to any race, culture, background, belief system or skin colour.
WHY THEN ARE MUSLIMS RESPONSIBLE FOR SO MANY BEHEADINGS AND SUICIDE BOMBINGS?
Surely hellfire missiles fired from Predator drone attacks that blow body parts off innocent civilians, aid workers and journalists into small bits and pieces and the advanced weaponry used in carpet-bombing cities into ashes are infinitely more inhumane.
These attacks kill far more civilians grotesquely than beheadings and suicide bombings combined, by many multiples over. Interestingly, neither form of killings originate from Muslim lands but from our so-called “civilised” America and Europe.
BUT MUSLIMS PREFER SUICIDE BOMBINGS AS A WEAPON
It is wrong to behead people physically with a weapon like a [sword, machete or] a knife [and uploading it on YouTube] but how is that any different from blowing people’s heads [or limbs with a remote controlled] drone [or a barrel bomb]? Is it less evil when [NATO- backed] militias are committing similar acts of horror? (Source: Arundhati Roy, Author and winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in an interview titled “Things That Can And Cannot Be Said” by John Cusack, 16 November 2015, Outlook India)
MUSLIM MARTYRS JUSTIFY SUICIDE BOMBINGS BY TAKING A LITERALIST APPROACH TO ISLAMIC SCRIPTURE.
Islam unequivocally condemns self-immolation (suicide) and there are no two sides to this argument. The Qur’an is crystal clear how people who take their own lives are guaranteed anything but heaven (sorry, no references in the Qur’an and Hadith about angels as servants, winged horse, let alone 72 virgins).
Besides, suicide-led killings is a relatively recent phenomenon (over the last 75 years) and was never used during the time of Muhammad (PBUH) or for centuries thereafter, proving unequivocally how there is zero scope for suicide killings in Islam unlike individuals or groups with Muslim names who use this as a weapon, clearly misinformed about the very clear position of Islam and the Qur’an when it comes to murder let alone, suicide-led killings of themselves and others.
MUSLIMS WERE THE FIRST TO PIONEER SUICIDE BOMBINGS.
“Suicide bombing was almost unheard of in the Muslim world in the 1950s to the 1970s, even at the height of the revolutionary fervour of Arab nationalism and the disastrous defeat of the Arabs in the 1967 war with Israel . . . It was the Shi’a of Lebanon who first began to successfully employ suicide bombings in Lebanon, with devastating effect against American targets that is, the US embassy and the US Marine barracks in the early 1980s. But it was the Hindu Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka who were the first to operationalize regular use of the suicide vest in the 1980s, with one of the highest rates of suicide operations in that era . . . As the American forces discovered two decades later in Iraq, kidnapping and suicide attacks are simple, cheap tolls of combat that a superior military can find difficult to counter.” (Source: Graham E Fuller, Author, A World Without Islam)
RELIGION IS THE ROOT CAUSE OF SUICIDE BOMBINGS.
If there is someone qualified to speak on the subject, it is Robert Pape, Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. In Year 2005, he published a book “Dying to Win”, based on an extensive study of the causes of suicide terrorism:
“Compiling a database of suicide attacks globally from the early 1980s to 2003. He found most attacks were secular and motivated by feelings of a lack of self-determination within the local community. “From Lebanon to Israel to Sri Lanka to Kashmir to Chechnya, every suicide terrorist campaign since 1980 had as its main goal to establish or maintain self-determination for territory that the terrorists prize. Religion is rarely the root cause although religion is often used as a tool by terrorist organisations to serve the broader strategic objective”. (Source: Robert Pape, Author, Dying to Win)
Siddiq Bazarwala 