In the feature article at FrontPage this morning I discuss the Indian bombings and Lashkar-e-Taiba:
On Tuesday evening, eight bombs, carefully arranged to explode in sequence, exploded along the commuter railroad system of Bombay (now commonly known as Mumbai), killing at least 147 people and wounding hundreds more. The Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh, said that “terrorists”' were behind the attacks. Intelligence agents said that the jihad terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba, or Army of the Righteous, coordinated the attacks, along with the Students Islamic Movement of India. Lashkar-e-Taiba is closely allied with Al-Qaeda, from which it receives financial support.Indian intelligence officials had been aware than an attack was in the offing: jihadists had been stockpiling explosives and weapons. However, Indian Home Minister Shivraj Patil said that officials knew the jihadists were planning to strike, “but place and time was not known.”
Bombay is India’s financial center. The bombings, according to the Hindustan Times, were “methodically executed to shock the country’s financial capital and hurl it into chaos.” Most of the bombs went off in the first-class sections of the trains, where businessmen would be congregated. All the stations in which bombs exploded were located in Bombay’s wealthy suburbs. Besides wresting Kashmir from Indian rule and establishing Islamic Sharia law there, Lashkar-e-Taiba has as one of its long-term goals the establishment of an Islamic state in India, and the subjugation of the Hindus. (One of the group’s mottos is “Killing Hindus is the way forward.”) The Indian financial class is overwhelmingly Hindu; the plotters clearly were well aware that Muslims in India generally don’t travel in first-class compartments.While the Lashkar-e-Taiba jihadists hoped to strike a deadly blow to India’s economy with the Bombay bombings, the group apparently has numerous allies among Muslims in Western countries, who are supporting the jihad financially and in other ways. In May 2005, two men and a woman were arrested in Britain for conspiring to provide Lashkar-e-Taiba with money and weapons. Five weeks ago, on June 6, Ali Asad Chandia, a Pakistani Muslim who has lived in the United States for twelve years and who taught third grade at an Islamic school in Maryland, was convicted of providing support to Lashkar-e-Taiba as a member of the “Virginia jihad network” – a group of young Muslims who were training to go to Afghanistan to wage jihad against American troops there. He faces up to 45 years in prison.
Nor has Lashkar’s involvement in Western countries been only financial. Lashkar operatives sent a French convert to Islam, Willie Brigitte, to Australia, allegedly to target military bases in Sydney. Brigitte also seems to have recruited Faheem Khalid Lodhi, a jihadist recently convicted on terror charges related to his possession of bomb-making materials and maps of Australia’s electricity grid. In January 2003, a young Pakistani Muslim in Australia named Izhar ul-Haque, “fed up with Westerners,” made his way to a Lashkar training camp, but later had a change of heart.
Of course, the support for Lashkar-e-Taiba doesn’t come only from the West. In November 2003, the Daily Times of Pakistan reported:
LAHORE: Tehrik Khuddamul Islam Ameer Maulana Masood Azhar on Friday was given millions of rupees by businessmen from Lahore's posh and industrial areas for Kashmiri mujahideen. Maulana Azhar said he would personally deliver the donations to the mujahideen. “He took four sacks full of rupees with him,” a TKI source told Daily Times. He met with businessmen after the Friday prayers and asked them to give zakat to mujahideen. He also visited the industrial areas of Lahore on Sheikhupura Road and addressed people at an iftar dinner at a factory.Support for Lashkar-e-Taiba is quite widespread in Pakistan. At one fundraising rally for Lashkar, a woman came up to a Lashkar representative with her two-year-old son. “I am donating him for jihad!" she exclaimed; the Lashkar operative politely turned her away, saying, “We appreciate your donation. But he is too young. Keep him with you as our trust. When he would be a grown up boy, we will train him for jihad and he will earn a good name for you.” The woman responded, “I am the mother of four sons. What happens if I donate one son for jihad, he embraces martyrdom and earns heaven for all of us!”
With such attitudes quite alive and well in Pakistan, the immediate condemnation of the Bombay bombings by the Pakistani government Tuesday evening is welcome, but is not nearly enough. Pakistani and Western officials need to watch the financial trail of the jihad closely – despite the best efforts of the New York Times -- for Tuesday’s bombings show the end point of that trail. The sophisticated planning of the Bombay attacks and the global reach of Lashkar-e-Taiba indicate that Western authorities underestimate such a group at their own peril. Moreover, the continued proliferation of the jihad ideology that fuels Lashkar’s activities as unmistakably as does the money that pours into its coffers from Pakistan and the West also cannot be ignored indefinitely. The Bombay bombings may well establish Lashkar-e-Taiba in the public consciousness as a fearsome terror group; we may hope that this will move anti-terror officials to shed more light on its international terror-recruitment and terror-financing activities also, and move to end them.
At one fundraising rally for Lashkar, a woman came up to a Lashkar representative with her two-year-old son. “I am donating him for jihad!" she exclaimed; the Lashkar operative politely turned her away, saying, “We appreciate your donation. But he is too young. Keep him with you as our trust. When he would be a grown up boy, we will train him for jihad and he will earn a good name for you.” The woman responded, “I am the mother of four sons. What happens if I donate one son for jihad, he embraces martyrdom and earns heaven for all of us!”
If there was one single reason for fighting this it is the attitude, even from the mothers who bore them, that children are property, and expendable. I can see what those readers here who trace Islam back to the ancient human sacrifice cults are getting at. This is not giving a child to be brought up serving God in the temple, or monastery as is, or has been, a custom in various faiths. This is livestock slaughter.
How resentful they must be of India's growing modernity and economic vibrance these loathsome and cowardly murderers must be.
Any conspiracy theorists out there who are going to tell us, pace 9/11, that this was really an inside job by the government of India to give them a pretext to strike against the state(s) that harbour and give succour to L-e-T?
From the Hindu Forum of Britain
“Terrorism in all its form must be strongly condemned in any part of the world. The international communities need to take these blasts as seriously as the London blasts last year,” said Ramesh Kallidai, secretary general of the Hindu Forum of Britain. “India has borne the brunt of religious terrorism for the last fifty years, although the West has only woken up to this blot on human society recently. We appeal to the UK Government and other countries in the West to rally behind India in its fight against terror.”
I'm poking around various Indian forums on the net, and of course the charge being raised by Muslim posters is the predictable one: "The CIA did this! Damn that Bush!"
Oh good grief. Some people must be snorting the pages of their Korans again.
Meanwhile, our patriotic ummahgrants are vowing to "search for the real killers"(TM)
With citizens like this, who needs enemies? How did India become such a Hotel Nation?
OT: Here's another FrontPage article, where the author says sufism is moderate, and the Beslan Butcher is not considered a martyr by Chechan clerics. He also seemingly blames everything on Wahhabism: http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=23319
You dont need to go to Pakistan to cut LeT funding... Just go to the mosques in Blackburn or Greater Manchester you'll find LeT brazenly conducting its fundraising operations. Then again with even Torys having LeT supporters (Sayyeda Warsi) amongst its members no one gives a damn.
P.S I belive Lashkar-e-Toiba means "Army of the Pure" rather than Army of the Righteous.
My deepest sympathies to the people of Bombay. As a Londoner I have some inkling of how you must feel today.
Sorry if what follows is a bit personal.
I remember clearly how I held my six month son almost exactly a year ago, wondering what kind of world we brought him into with bombs exploding less than 5 miles from our home. Yesterday I heard my wife voicing exactly the same sentiment as she was preparing to read him his bedtime story with the news bulletin playing in the background. He is of course still way too young to understand our sense of dread and foreboding as we look into a future in which Islam; bane of infidel civilisations, cultures and peoples; looms like a malevolent black hole. Yet is it exactly because of him that I found a grim determination rising in me to resist it with everything in me. I dream that he will one day live in a world where the morning newspapers does not have to declare with sickening regularity and world weary resignation that the inevitable has happened once again. I will do everything in my limited power to make this world a reality. My efforts may look puny and insignificant but I am often reminded of something that I saw written on the Berlin Wall:
Many small people
Who in many small places
Do many small things
Can change the face of the world
I have set my face to being an implacable enemy of Islam, and all that it stands for, for the rest of my life. I will, of course, not bring it down on my own. It will however one day succumb if all of us small infidels unite and administer the most significant 'death by a thousand cuts' in history.
Join me.
from above
Indian intelligence officials had been aware than an attack was in the offing: jihadists had been stockpiling explosives and weapons
If any knowledge of these weapons locations were known, why did India choose not to raid and eliminate these stockpiles?
There can only be one use for weapons and explosives in the hands of the members of The Peaceful Religion OF Islam.
And we all know the reason.
Granny Weatherwax,
I think there is a saying, that the big difference between Christanity and Islam is that the former, God sacrifaces HIS own son so that people can get to Heaven, in the latter, people sacriface their own sons. The latter to me are doing the same thing that was condemmed in the Holy Bible, child sacrifaces.
waterdragon52,
These terrorists and those that support them hate the reality that India is on the fast track to ecconomic sucess in the 21st century, and why, because in India, they are strong in supporting education of the young. Even the day after the horrible bombing events of yesterday, a girl said that they still are going to go to school. The Muslim community needs to grow up.
waterdragon52,
Also early this year, "Time Magazine" did a special cover story about India and its sucess.
from my earlier note
If any knowledge of these weapons locations were known, why did India choose not to raid and eliminate these stockpiles
Maybe they were afraid it would apparently offend some Muslim terrorists that someone would actually dare to attack them first instead of waiting to be attacked.
Maybe the train bombings were a slap in the face as in a dare to engage in an ever escalating wave of violence. They could use this as an excuse to increase a new open warfare front to show the homeboys in Iraq that they too think they cannot fail.
Onward Islam , the Peaceful Religion of Peace.
PJS1,
I had read that reflection, and thank-you for your posting. Living a little over two hours away from where the two towers once stood, what happened yesterdy brought back memories of 9/11. What happened yesterday just simply made me more determined.
The marching orders are in the Koran.
The directives to strike at all infidels.
The contempt for all religious beliefs on Earth.
The command to subdue all people in the name of Allah.
The true terrorist training camp is The Koran.
exsgtbrown,
The exact location of stockpiles could not have been known. The Indian intelligence has had some success with recovery of such stockpiles in the past. What the statement means is that the trail of the 'suspicious' led to a major mosque in India, and the intellingence was not given orders to raid the mosque for fear of muslims waging riots, and then being bashed by Hindus. That is what I read into this statement.
It's one thing to track their funds as raised in the West, whether in Bathesda or Blackburn. But note that the Mumbai underworld dons mainly reside in the UAE - how hard is it for them to raise cash there from local Jihadis flush with oil cash, as well as their rich connections with Pakistan?
Vikrant is right - Lashkar-e-Toiba does mean 'Army of the Pure'.
Somewhat related, is the Hindu Forum of Britain in favour of diaglogue with Muslims, as suggested by the government in this article?
Why bother? Why not instead build bridges with Anglicans, Jews, maybe dialogue with Khalistani advocates (what % of the Anglo-Sikh population still wants Khalistan?). But why bother with Muslims?Anybody know whether the Hindu forum itself is in favour of such moves? From the other articles on their site, like their protests at MF Husein, one would think not, but any Hindu Forum members here who can tell for sure?
arjun.sevak:
" . . . fear of muslims waging riots, and then being bashed by Hindus."
This fear of a "backlash" is what keeps our governments from doing what must be done.
To these cowering governments, Moslems parasites in their countries must be protected at all costs.
The reason always given is to keep them from "rioting." As if these feared Moslem "riots" could not result in the desired end: The expulsion of these parasites.
I realize that in India, rather than being an externally introduced parasitic infection, it is a long-standing cancerous growth introduced long ago by a virus from the Arabian pensinsula.
"A key finding of the report was that Hindu community organisations need to find sensitive ways of responding to fears and misinformation in order to reduce tensions, and to work with other faith communities, especially Muslim communities, to build dialogue and understanding"
Infidel Pride,
Somebody tell these nutjobs we been trying to find sensitive ways for a millenia. Did not work. Only VERY unsensitive tactics worked.
PJS1,
Very Very Nice writing - If you do not mind I will use it too
"I have set my face to being an implacable enemy of Islam, and all that it stands for, for the rest of my life. I will, of course, not bring it down on my own. It will however one day succumb if all of us small infidels unite and administer the most significant 'death by a thousand cuts' in history."
I could not have expressed it better.