Since 2003 more than 700 have been killed in India by terrorist attacks. The most recent carnage in Mumbai was the worst.
But we seem to have learned little or nothing, because we’re still stuck on the question, Who did it? The assumption: If we can figure out WHO attacked us, we are one step closer to defeating terrorism.
Dream on.
We already know. Try Muslim discontent. Thwarted opportunity. The experience of prejudice. Profiling. But even these onerous realities are not the answer to who did it.
Infusing the methodical coolness of those who perpetrated the Mumbai horror is the sad evidence of what Gregory Bateson called the double bind. More
A double bind pits an actuality against an interpretation that is false. That is antithetical to what is actually happening.
The actual, stated goal of Islamic terror tactics is to create theocracies. Those who are trained are told that if they sacrifice for this goal they will be rewarded in paradise.
Whether this is believed or not, it is set forth as the premise.
The reality is that one attacks and is killed and there is no guarantee of any result other than the carnage that takes place and the dismal aftermath. Life and life only.
The creation of priestly theocracies is a goal not limited to Islamic terrorists. I have sat in a Pentecostal gathering in the US where the explicit goal was to control the town in which the meeting was taking place. The theocratic impulse lies behind efforts to tinker with the legal system of our states, as was recently done in California with Proposition 8.
Jonestown in 1978 accounted in one night for more deaths by “revolutionary suicide” than took place in India since 2003 due to terrorist attacks.
In some situations, the pie in the sky when you die statement is still heretical. But it is true and it is the very linchpin of the double bind that makes the current activities of terrorists literally crazy.
The answer to who did it is simple. The mills that grind out potential terrorists train thousands. Among the thousands are a handful who are smart enough, disciplined enough and psychologically inclined enough to act on whatever inner basis they possess, but within the context of the falsehood which they have at some level accepted.
The reality is very different.
The world of honor killings is ending. The women of the Islamic world are waking up. Most of the Imams of the Islamic world have long since woken up.
The emerging global polity is not theocracy but a mixed system that is essentially secular, where religion is, at best, a proximate, faith-based enterprise that provides security, society and even community.
It is at best a means of understanding life, purpose, identity.
Stripped of weird certitudes, religion gives way to spirituality. The emphasis moves to the inherent capacities of all persons to grow and flourish.
In a world moving from religion to spirituality, polities can become more open and less oppressive.
Terrorism may be patient but so too is reality. And reality wins over time.
At bottom, the War on Terror needs to be less a who-done-it and more a concerted effort to rid the world of deleterious and crazed religious notions. Not just among the practitioners of overt terrorism, but among all who propagate such notions.
As long as we have the alleged numbers (thousands) being funneled into training by those who preach the religion of resentment and hate, we will know that the ones who did it were the cream of the crop from a willing pool that can only be talked down, as Rachel might say, if we … talk them down.
This Report Says “Brit Muslims have become a mainstay of the global ‘jihad'” SOURCE
London, Nov 29 : Amid claims made by India that four of the many terrorists who struck in Mumbai on Wednesday night, had links with Britain, either lived or trained in UK, news reports have emerged that more than 4000 British Muslims had passed through terrorist training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
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British Muslim recruits have also been involved in other conflicts. Asif Hanif (21), from London, killed three people and injured 55 by blowing himself up in Tel Aviv. A companion, Omar Sharif, 27, from Derby fled the scene after explosives strapped to his body failed to detonate and was later found dead, his body washed up on an Israeli beach.
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… Britain has also been accused of being the centre where a number of terrorist plots abroad were planned. Moutaz Almallah Dabas, a Syrian-born Spanish citizen accused of helping those who took part in the 2004 Madrid train bombings, was extradited from London to Spain after the discovery of links between the attack and an alleged cell in England.
This Report Says, “10 Young Men Armed with Rifles and Grenades”. SOURCE
On Saturday, officials said they believed that just 10 gunmen had taken part in the attacks. The sole survivor, identified a Pakistani national, Mohammad Ajmal Qasam, was being interrogated, officials said.
The gunmen were as brazen as they were well trained, using sophisticated weapons, GPS technology and mobile and satellite phones to communicate, authorities said.
“They were constantly in touch with a foreign country,” said R.R. Patil, deputy to the chief of Maharashtra state’s chief, without giving further details.
“Whenever they were under a little bit of pressure they would hurl a grenade. They freely used grenades,” said Dutt.
Suspicions in Indian media quickly settled on the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, long seen as a creation of the Pakistani intelligence service to help wage its clandestine war against India in disputed Kashmir.
A U.S. counterterrorism official said some “signatures of the attack” were consistent with Lashkar and Jaish-e-Mohammed, another group that has operated in Kashmir. Both are reported to be linked to al-Qaida.
Stephen Curtiss Rose 