Not in Our Name

This is the title of an artile by Asim Siddiqui in the Today paper. He challenges the Muslim intellectuals to take on the extremists who have hijacked Islam for their terrorist acts. He is against the Muslim extremists for using the western foreign policy of aggression against the Muslims as an excuse to wage a war of terrorism against the West. I fully agree with him that acts of terrorism, or as the West legitimised it by calling them acts of war, are unacceptable, immoral, and a primitive way of settling conflicts and disagreements. The Muslims should find a better way to tackle the West so that they will be treated better and as an equal to other human beings with a right to determine their way of life. But short of having the biggest gun and the biggest bomb, a language that the West understand, there is really nothing else they can do unless the West voluntarily gives up war as another way of bullying the rest of the world. But I find it hyprocritical in Asim's defence of England as a target of Muslim terrorism. He said that compared to the US, the UK has very few troops in Iraq. And the level of British troops in Iraq will get lesser and eventually no British troops will be there. So Britain should not be attacked. This kind of logic is the logic of the bully, where might is right. The British can go to Iraq and burn down the place. That is acceptable. And once they vacated Iraq, all must be forgotten. The British soldiers are no longer there. So leave Britain alone. What rubbish! If this kind of logic is what the world should live by, all the criminals should be spared. They have left the scene of their crimes. The British and the West must realised that if they start a fire, they must be prepared to be burnt. There is no escape.