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Four Blasts Hit London, Killing at Least 2

LONDON - Three explosions rocked the London subway and one tore open a packed double-decker bus during the morning rush hour Thursday. The blasts killed at least two people and injured about 190 in what a shaken Prime Minister Tony Blair called a series of "barbaric" terrorist attacks.

Recent intelligence indicated that London was considered a prime target for Islamic extremists, in part because Al Qaeda was having difficulty getting people into the United States, the official said.

Thanks for this, John. I write these lines from a cybercafe in central London,
where the terrorist related train cancellations have left me stuck on the day
when I should have been travelling back home to Liverpool. List members may be
relieved to hear that most of the public here seem to be handling things pretty
well, and the security services have responded very effectively. There was a lot
of confusion earlier - the police on the ground whom I spoke to when trying to
get to my station didn't even seem sure how far their own cordons extended -
but matters now seem to be stabilising and the atmosphere on the streets is
relatively calm. We Brits tend to be quite a phlegmatic lot in relation to
terrorism after long years of experiencing similar problems due to the Northern
Ireland situation, so although there were some hideous scenes earlier, the
general atmosphere here cooled down quite quickly. There's still no news about
resumption of public transport though, which may leave some of us rather stuck.

Just remember....Islam is "a religion of peace"

Al Qaeda must be destroyed. Enough about wasting any other resources elsewhere. Let's go after Bin Laden and the other main leaders wherever they are.

Punu wrote:It is, I think every religion is beautiful, it's the people that are bad.

Punu wrote:I've already been jumped and beaten once in DC by some drunk guys calling me "bin laden" cuz I was brown... Yet I'm a proud American...who would fight for my country, Sometimes I wish ppl would figure out it's not the color, or religion etc... It's just bad people...
From timothy mcveigh to the Sniper to Bin Laden... Bad people

I pray for every family in London and hope that the ppl affected my these events get through them with no further heartache.

The Deep Intellectual Roots of Islamic Terror
By ROBERT WORTH (NYT)
Published: October 13, 2001

Long before Osama bin Laden appeared on television screens with an AK-47
by his side, he released earlier videotapes in which he appears in the
guise of a holy man, sitting peacefully in front of a wall of books. That
scholarly backdrop is an important symbol for Mr. bin Laden's terrorist
movement as he tries to legitimize his extremist views of Islam.

''Many Americans seem to think that bin Laden is just a violent cult
leader,'' said Michael Doran, a professor of Near Eastern Studies at
Princeton University. ''But the truth is that he is tapping into a
minority Islamic tradition with a wide following and a deep history.''

Although many Muslims are horrified at the notion that their faith is
being used to justify terrorism, Mr. bin Laden's advocacy of jihad, or
holy war, against the West is a natural extension of what some radical
Islamists have been saying and doing since the 1930's. These radicals were
jailed, tortured and often executed in their home countries, particularly
in Egypt during the 1950's and 60's, for their attacks on Western
influences and their efforts to replace their own regime with an Islamic
state.

The Muslim extremists, members of Islamic Jihad, who assassinated the
Egyptian president Anwar Sadat in 1981, for instance, left behind a
54-page document titled ''The Neglected Duty'' that provided an elaborate
theological justification for what they had done. Addressed to other
Muslims rather than to the West, the document drew on earlier thinkers in
arguing that rebelling against one's rulers -- which is forbidden by most
Islamic authorities -- is in fact a duty if those rulers have abandoned
true Islam.

Mr. bin Laden, whose Al Qaeda movement merged with Islamic Jihad several
years ago, has taken the same tack, drawing on medieval authorities to
argue that killing innocents or even Muslims is permitted if it serves the
cause of jihad against the West.

The roots of Mr. bin Laden's worldview date back to a school in medieval
Islam that spread throughout the Arab world in the 20th century, known as
the Salafiyya, said Bernard Haykel, a professor of Islamic law at New York
University. Its name comes from the Arabic words al-salaf al-salih, ''the
venerable forefathers,'' which refers to the generation of the Prophet
Muhammad and his companions. The salafis believed Islam had been corrupted
by idolatry, and they sought to bring it back to the purity of its
earliest days.

''Salafis are extreme in observance, but they're not necessarily
militant,'' Mr. Haykel said. The official Wahhabi ideology of the Saudi
state, for instance, as well as the religious doctrine of the Muslim
Brothers falls under the banner of Salafiyya.

Early salafi reformers believed they could reconcile Islam with modern
Western political ideas. Some argued that Western-style democracy was
perfectly compatible with Islam, and had even been prefigured by the
Islamic concept of shura, a consultation between ruler and ruled.

That optimism began to fade after World War I, when the Western powers
carved up the remains of the Ottoman empire into nation-states. A crucial
step came in the 1930's, when some radicals began to argue that Islam was
in real danger of being extinguished through Western influence, said
Emmanuel Sivan, a professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who has
written extensively on modern Islam. It was then that Rashid Rida and
Maulana Maudoodi developed the notion that modern Western culture was
equivalent to jahiliyya (the word is the Arabic term for the barbarism
that existed before Islam).

But if one man deserves the title of intellectual grandfather to Osama bin
Laden and his fellow terrorists, it is probably the Egyptian writer and
activist Sayyid Qutb (pronounced SIGH-yid KUH-tahb), who was executed by
the Egyptian authorities in the mid-1960's for inciting resistance to the
regime.

As Fathi Yakan, one of Qutb's disciples, wrote in the 1960's: ''The
groundwork for the French Revolution was laid by Rousseau, Voltaire and
Montesquieu; the Communist Revolution realized plans set by Marx, Engels
and Lenin. . . . The same holds true for us as well.''

In his most popular book, ''Signposts on the Road'' (1964), Mr. Qutb
wrote: ''This is the most dangerous jahiliyya which has ever menaced our
faith. For everything around is jahiliyya: perceptions and beliefs,
manners and morals, culture, art and literature, laws and regulations,
including a good part of what we consider Islamic culture.''

Mr. Qutb, who began his career as a modernist literary critic, was
radicalized by a roughly yearlong stay in the United States, between 1948
and 1950. In a book about his travels he cites the Kinsey Report, along
with Darwin, Marx and Freud, as forces that have contributed to the moral
degradation of the country.

''No one is more distant than the Americans from spirituality and piety,''
he wrote.

He also narrated, with evident disgust, his observations of the sexual
promiscuity of American culture. Describing a church dance in Greeley,
Colo., he writes: ''Every young man took the hand of a young woman. And
these were the young men and women who had just been singing their hymns!
Red and blue lights, with only a few white lamps, illuminated the dance
floor. The room became a confusion of feet and legs: arms twisted around
hips; lips met lips; chests pressed together.''

Ultimately, Mr. Qutb rejected democracy and nationalism as Western ideas
incompatible with Islam. Even pan-Arabism, which was tremendously popular
in the Arab world, was simply an obstacle to the foundation of an Islamic
state.

Perhaps even more important, Mr. Qutb was the first Sunni Muslim to find a
way around the ancient prohibition against overthrowing a Muslim ruler.
''Qutb said the rulers of the Muslim world today are no longer Muslims,''
Mr. Haykel said. ''He basically declared them infidels.''

He did so, Mr. Haykel added, in a particularly persuasive way, by
reinterpreting the works of a medieval intellectual named Ibn Taymiyya. A
towering figure in the history of Muslim thought, Ibn Taymiyya lived in
Damascus in the 13th and 14th centuries, when Syria was in danger of
domination by the Mongols.

Mr. Qutb equated Ibn Taymiyya's intellectual and political struggle
against the Mongols with his own struggle against Gamal Abdel Nasser and
the other Arab rulers of his day. It was a risky move, because Islamic
tradition states that if one Muslim falsely calls another an infidel, he
could burn in hell, Mr. Haykel said. It may also have sealed his death
warrant, because Egypt's rulers did not take such threats lightly.

But decades after his death, Mr. Qutb's equation continues to inspire
radicals like Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, who was convicted of conspiring to
blow up the United Nations and other New York City landmarks, and Osama
bin Laden. Mr. bin Laden quotes Ibn Taymiyya in the same way, arguing that
the Saudi government -- which earned his wrath by expelling him and
serving as host to American troops during the Persian Gulf war -- is
illegitimate.

''By opening the Arab peninsula to the crusaders, the regime disobeyed and
acted against what has been enjoined by the messenger of God,'' Mr. bin
Laden wrote in his 1996 ''Declaration of War against America.'' In so
doing, the Saudi leaders ceased to be Muslims, he concluded.

That message resonates even with Muslims who do not share Mr. bin Laden's
extreme views, largely because many Arabs see not just the Saudi regime
but the entire political order in the Arab world today as tyrannical and
corrupt, said John Voll, a professor at the Center for Muslim-Christian
Understanding at Georgetown University.

''Part of the appeal of bin Laden is that he can look people in the eye
and say: 'I know you live in a police state, I know you're living in
poverty, and the reason for it is clear: Satan is doing this to you. So

come join my holy war,' '' he said.

Mr. bin Laden himself, however, has very little religious education.
''He's a playboy from a very rich family, so he needed other people to
relay the message to him,'' Mr. Sivan said. The two people who influenced
him most directly were Abdallah Azzam, a Palestinian who was killed by a
car bomb in 1989, and Safar al-Hawali, a Saudi who has periodically been
jailed by the authorities. Both men were steeped in the writings of Sayyid
Qutb, Mr. Sivan said.

Mr. bin Laden does seem to have deviated from the radical tradition in one
sense, by focusing his attacks on the United States rather than Arab
regimes. In his 1996 declaration, he went so far as to say that Muslims
should put aside their own differences so as to focus on the struggle
against the Western enemy -- a serious departure from the doctrine of Qutb
and even Sadat's killers, who argued that the internal struggle was the
one that mattered.

But that may be merely a shift in tactics, not in overall strategy. ''Bin
Laden is using the U.S. as an instrument in his struggle with other
Muslims,'' Mr. Doran said. ''He wants the U.S. to strike back
disproportionately, because he believes that will outrage Muslims and
inspire them to overthrow their governments and build an Islamic state.''

The Challenge of Terror: A Traveling Essay

September 16, 2001

So here I am, a week late arriving home, stuck between Colombia, Guatemala and Harrisonburg when our world changed. The images flash even in my sleep. The heart of America ripped. Though natural, the cry for revenge and the call for the unleashing of the first war of this century, prolonged or not, seems more connected to social and psychological processes of finding a way to release deep emotional anguish, a sense of powerlessness, and our collective loss than it does as a plan of action seeking to redress the injustice, promote change and prevent it from ever happening again.

I am stuck from airport to airport as I write this, the reality of a global system that has suspended even the most basic trust. My Duracell batteries and finger nail clippers were taken from me today and it gave me pause for thought. I had a lot of pauses in the last few days. Life has not been the same. I share these thoughts as an initial reaction recognizing that it is always easy to take pot-shots at our leaders from the sidelines, and to have the insights they are missing when we are not in the middle of very difficult decisions. On the other hand, having worked for nearly 20 years as a mediator and proponent of nonviolent change in situations around the globe where cycles of deep violence seem hell-bent on perpetuating themselves, and having interacted with people and movements who at the core of their identity find ways of justifying their part in the cycle, I feel responsible to try to bring ideas to the search for solutions. With this in mind I should like to pen several observations about what I have learned from my experiences and what they might suggest about the current situation. I believe this starts by naming several key challenges and then asking what is the nature of a creative response that takes these seriously in the pursuit of genuine, durable, and peaceful change.

Some Lessons about the Nature of our Challenge:

1. Always seek to understand the root of the anger – The first and most important question to pose ourselves is relatively simple though not easy to answer: How do people reach this level of anger, hatred and frustration? By my experience explanations that they are brainwashed by a perverted leader who holds some kind of magical power over them is an escapist simplification and will inevitably lead us to very wrong-headed responses. Anger of this sort, what we could call generational, identity-based anger, is constructed over time through a combination of historical events, a deep sense of threat to identify, and direct experiences of sustained exclusion. This is very important to understand, because, as I will say again and again, our response to the immediate events have everything to do with whether we reinforce and provide the soil, seeds, and nutrients for future cycles of revenge and violence. Or whether it changes. We should be careful to pursue one and only one thing as the strategic guidepost of our response: Avoid doing what they expect. What they expect from us is the lashing out of the giant against the weak, the many against the few. This will reinforce their capacity to perpetrate the myth they carefully seek to sustain: That they are under threat, fighting an irrational and mad system that has never taken them seriously and wishes to destroy them and their people. What we need to destroy is their myth not their people.

2. Always seek to understand the nature of the organization – Over the years of working to promote durable peace in situations of deep, sustained violence I have discovered one consistent purpose about the nature of movements and organizations who use violence: Sustain thyself. This is done through a number of approaches, but generally it is through decentralization of power and structure, secrecy, autonomy of action through units, and refusal to pursue the conflict on the terms of the strength and capacities of the enemy.

One of the most intriguing metaphors I have heard used in the last few days is that this enemy of the United States will be found in their holes, smoked out, and when they run and are visible, destroyed. This may well work for groundhogs, trench and maybe even guerilla warfare, but it is not a useful metaphor for this situation. And neither is the image that we will need to destroy the village to save it, by which the population that gives refuge to our enemies is guilty by association and therefore a legitimate target. In both instances the metaphor that guides our action misleads us because it is not connected to the reality. In more specific terms, this is not a struggle to be conceived of in geographic terms, in terms of physical spaces and places, that if located can be destroyed, thereby ridding us of the problem. Quite frankly our biggest and most visible weapon systems are mostly useless.

We need a new metaphor, and though I generally do not like medical metaphors to describe conflict, the image of a virus comes to mind because of its ability to enter unperceived, flow with a system, and harm it from within. This is the genius of people like Osama Bin Laden. He understood the power of a free and open system, and has used it to his benefit. The enemy is not located in a territory. It has entered our system. And you do not fight this kind of enemy by shooting at it. You respond by strengthening the capacity of the system to prevent the virus and strengthen its immunity. It is an ironic fact that our greatest threat is not in Afghanistan, but in our own backyard. We surely are not going to bomb Travelocity, Hertz Rental Car, or an Airline training school in Florida. We must change metaphors and move beyond the reaction that we can duke it out with the bad guy, or we run the very serious risk of creating the environment that sustains and reproduces the virus we wish to prevent.

3. Always remember that realities are constructed – Conflict is, among other things, the process of building and sustaining very different perceptions and interpretations of reality. This means that we have at the same time multiple realities defined as such by those in conflict. In the aftermath of such horrific and unmerited violence that we have just experienced this may sound esoteric. But we must remember that this fundamental process is how we end up referring to people as fanatics, madmen, and irrational. In the process of name-calling we lose the critical capacity to understand that from within the ways they construct their views, it is not mad lunacy or fanaticism. All things fall together and make sense. When this is connected to a long string of actual experiences wherein their views of the facts are reinforced (for example, years of superpower struggle that used or excluded them, encroaching Western values of what is considered immoral by their religious interpretation, or the construction of an enemy-image who is overwhelmingly powerful and uses that power in bombing campaigns and always appears to win) then it is not a difficult process to construct a rational world view of heroic struggle against evil. Just as we do it, so do they. Listen to the words we use to justify our actions and responses. And then listen to words they use. The way to break such a process is not through a frame of reference of who will win or who is stronger. In fact the inverse is true. Whoever loses, whether tactical battles or the "war" itself, finds intrinsic in the loss the seeds that give birth to the justification for renewed battle. The way to break such a cycle of justified violence is to step outside of it. This starts with understanding that TV sound bites about madmen and evil are not good sources of policy. The most significant impact that we could make on their ability to sustain their view of us as evil is to change their perception of who we are by choosing to strategically respond in unexpected ways. This will take enormous courage and courageous leadership capable of envisioning a horizon of change.

4. Always understand the capacity for recruitment -- The greatest power that terror has is the ability to regenerate itself. What we most need to understand about the nature of this conflict and the change process toward a more peaceful world is how recruitment into these activities happens. In all my experiences in deep-rooted conflict what stands out most are the ways in which political leaders wishing to end the violence believed they could achieve it by overpowering and getting rid of the perpetrator of the violence. That may have been the lesson of multiple centuries that preceded us. But it is not the lesson learned from the past 30 years. The lesson is simple. When people feel a deep sense of threat, exclusion and generational experiences of direct violence, their greatest effort is placed on survival. Time and again in these movements, there has been an extraordinary capacity for the regeneration of chosen myths and renewed struggle.

One aspect of current U.S. leadership that coherently matches with the lessons of the past 30 years of protracted conflict settings is the statement that this will be a long struggle. What is missed is that the emphasis should be placed on removing the channels, justifications, and sources that attract and sustain recruitment into the activities. What I find extraordinary about the recent events is that none of the perpetrators was much older than 40 and many were half that age.

This is the reality we face: Recruitment happens on a sustained basis. It will not stop with the use of military force, in fact, open warfare will create the soils in which it is fed and grows. Military action to destroy terror, particularly as it affects significant and already vulnerable civilian populations will be like hitting a fully mature dandelion with a golf club. We will participate in making sure the myth of why we are evil is sustained and we will assure yet another generation of recruits.

5. Recognize complexity, but always understand the power of simplicity – Finally, we must understand the principle of simplicity. I talk a lot with my students about the need to look carefully at complexity, which is equally true (and which in the earlier points I start to explore). However, the key in our current situation that we have failed to fully comprehend is simplicity. From the standpoint of the perpetrators, the effectiveness of their actions was in finding simple ways to use the system to undo it. I believe our greatest task is to find equally creative and simple tools on the other side.

.

Suggestions:

In keeping with the last point, let me try to be simple. I believe three things are possible to do and will have a much greater impact on these challenges than seeking accountability through revenge.

1. Energetically pursue a sustainable peace process to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Do it now. The United States has much it can do to support and make this process work. It can bring the weight of persuasion, the weight of nudging people on all sides to move toward mutual recognition and stopping the recent and devastating pattern of violent escalation, and the weight of including and balancing the process to address historic fears and basic needs of those involved. If we would bring the same energy to building an international coalition for peace in this conflict that we have pursued in building international coalitions for war, particularly in the Middle East, if we lent significant financial, moral, and balanced support to all sides that we gave to the Irish conflict in earlier years, I believe the moment is right and the stage is set to take a new and qualitative step forward.

Sound like an odd diversion to our current situation of terror? I believe the opposite is true. This type of action is precisely the kind of thing needed to create whole new views of who we are and what we stand for as a nation. Rather than fighting terror with force, we enter their system and take away one of their most coveted elements: The soils of generational conflict perceived as injustice used to perpetrate hatred and recruitment. I believe that monumental times like these create conditions for monumental change. This approach would solidify our relationships with a broad array of Middle Easterners and Central Asians, allies and enemies alike, and would be a blow to the rank and file of terror. The biggest blow we can serve terror is to make it irrelevant. The worst thing we could do is to feed it unintentionally by making it and its leaders the center stage of what we do. Let’s choose democracy and reconciliation over revenge and destruction. Let’s to do exactly what they do not expect, and show them it can work.

2. Invest financially in development, education, and a broad social agenda in the countries surrounding Afghanistan rather than attempting to destroy the Taliban in a search for Bin Laden. The single greatest pressure that could ever be put on Bin Laden is to remove the source of his justifications and alliances. Countries like Pakistan, Tajikistan, and yes, Iran and Syria should be put on the radar of the West and the United States with a question of strategic importance: How can we help you meet the fundamental needs of your people? The strategic approach to changing the nature of how terror of the kind we have witnessed this week reproduces itself lies in the quality of relationships we develop with whole regions, peoples, and world views. If we strengthen the web of those relationships, we weaken and eventually eliminate the soil where terror is born. A vigorous investment, taking advantage of the current opening given the horror of this week shared by even those who we traditionally claimed as state enemies, is immediately available, possible and pregnant with historic possibilities. Let’s do the unexpected. Let’s create a new set of strategic alliances never before thought possible.

3. Pursue a quiet diplomatic but dynamic and vital support of the Arab League to begin an internal exploration of how to address the root causes of discontent in numerous regions. This should be coupled with energetic ecumenical engagement, not just of key symbolic leaders, but of a practical and direct exploration of how to create a web of ethics for a new millennium that builds from the heart and soul of all traditions but that creates a capacity for each to engage the roots of violence that are found within their own traditions. Our challenge, as I see it, is not that of convincing others that our way of life, our religion, or our structure of governance is better or closer to Truth and human dignity. It is to be honest about the sources of violence in our own house and invite others to do the same. Our global challenge is how to generate and sustain genuine engagement that encourages people from within their traditions to seek that which assures the preciousness and respect for life that every religion sees as an inherent right and gift from the Divine, and how to build organized political and social life that is responsive to fundamental human needs. Such a web cannot be created except through genuine and sustained dialogue and the building of authentic relationships, at religious and political spheres of interaction, and at all levels of society. Why not do the unexpected and show that life-giving ethics are rooted in the core of all peoples by engaging a strategy of genuine dialogue and relationship? Such a web of ethics, political and religious, will have an impact on the roots of terror far greater in the generation of our children’s children than any amount of military action can possibly muster. The current situation poses an unprecedented opportunity for this to happen, more so than we have seen at any time before in our global community.

A Call for the Unexpected

Let me conclude with simple ideas. To face the reality of well organized, decentralized, self-perpetuating sources of terror, we need to think differently about the challenges. If indeed this is a new war it will not be won with a traditional military plan. The key does not lie in finding and destroying territories, camps, and certainly not the civilian populations that supposedly house them. Paradoxically that will only feed the phenomenon and assure that it lives into a new generation. The key is to think about how a small virus in a system affects the whole and how to improve the immunity of the system. We should take extreme care not to provide the movements we deplore with gratuitous fuel for self-regeneration. Let us not fulfill their prophecy by providing them with martyrs and justifications. The power of their action is the simplicity with which they pursue the fight with global power. They have understood the power of the powerless. They have understood that melding and meshing with the enemy creates a base from within. They have not faced down the enemy with a bigger stick. They did the more powerful thing: They changed the game. They entered our lives, our homes and turned our own tools into our demise.

We will not win this struggle for justice, peace and human dignity with the traditional weapons of war. We need to change the game again.

Let us give birth to the unexpected.

Let us take up the practical challenges of this reality perhaps best described in the Cure of Troy an epic poem by Seamus Heaney no foreigner to grip of the cycles of terror who wrote:

"So hope for a great sea-change

On the far side of revenge.

Believe that a farther shore

Is reachable from here.

Believe in miracles

And cures and healing wells."

.

John Paul Lederach, Ph.D.
Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Conflict Studies
Center for Justice and Peacebuilding
Eastern Mennonite University
and
Professor of International Peacebuilding
Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies
Notre Dame University

1. Energetically pursue a sustainable peace process to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

2. Invest financially in development, education, and a broad social agenda in the countries surrounding Afghanistan rather than attempting to destroy the Taliban in a search for Bin Laden.

3. Pursue a quiet diplomatic but dynamic and vital support of the Arab League to begin an internal exploration of how to address the root causes of discontent in numerous regions.

DieselFan wrote:

Punu wrote:It is, I think every religion is beautiful, it's the people that are bad.

I cannot call "beautiful" any religion that teaches killing of the "infidels" -- I know I'll get slammed for this, but Franklin Graham was dead on when he called it an evil religion. It's a militant, pugnacious faith.

Redskin in Canada wrote:a member of the Evil Axes

DieselFan wrote:

Redskin in Canada wrote:a member of the Evil Axes

The Evil Axes are probably the next great WWE tag team. I think Axis of Evil is what you were looking for there.