Finding meaning in life
"He had always been a religious Muslim" -- that little detail is buried way down in this AP story, while his having been a "crook" is in the headline. That's par for the course in the mainstream media these days, but it raises questions. How is it that a "low-level thief" found no difficulty being at the same time a "religious Muslim"? Did he find some justification in Islam for stealing from unbelievers, in light of Muhammad's dictum that only if one accepted Islam would his "life and property" be "safe" from the Muslims?
I know, I know, it's "Islamophobic" even to ask the question. But the existence of that hadith, and of the Islamic legal principle that the property of those who are considered by the Muslims to be at war with Islam is lawfully to be appropriated by the Muslims, raises that question. And that question should be raised, since it raises questions about Muslim communities in the West, and what they are teaching to their people, and what Western authorities ought to make sure they are teaching to their people.
Also, he was, according to AP here, always a "religious Muslim." Why, then, since we all know that Islam is a Religion of Peace That Has Been Hijacked By a Tiny Minority of Extremists, did he apparently see no contradiction to the peaceful principles of his faith not only in being a petty thief, but also in going to the jihad camp -- and later in shooting innocent people in Mumbai?
And why won't anyone in the mainstream media dare to ask these questions?
Are they irrelevant? I hardly think so, given the increasing presence of Muslims in the West, and ongoing efforts by Muslim groups to stifle just such questioning -- why does the OIC find inquiries like this so uncomfortable? Does anyone in Washington know or care?
"India attacker rose from crook to militant," by Ravi Nessman for Associated Press, December 6 (thanks to Visvas):
MUMBAI, India – The lone gunman to survive the Mumbai terror attacks was a petty street thug from a dusty Pakistani outpost who was systematically programmed into a highly trained suicide guerrilla over 18 months in jihadist camps, India's top investigator into the attacks said Saturday.Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, 21, was one of the 10 men who came ashore on a small rubber raft Nov. 26, divided into five pairs and attacked some of Mumbai's best known and most beloved landmarks. [...]
Photographs of Kasab walking calmly through the train station with his assault rifle made him a symbol of the attacks. [...]
Kasab said he was one of five children of Mohammed Amir Kasab, a poor street food vendor in the Pakistani town of Farid Kot, Maria said.
This claim could go either way. Just as no anti-jihadist has ever managed to come up with a quotation from the Qur'an, Hadith, or sira that any Muslim has ever admitted to having heard before (or if he clearly has heard it before, he professes to know of a context that renders it benign, although he usually does not deign to explain that context to the assembled unbelievers), so also it is very hard to find any Muslim who has ever met someone who turned out to be a jihadist. Sometimes, of course, this is impossible -- and then the jihadist's neighbors affirm that he was a gentle, quiet soul such that no one would ever have dreamed he could do such a thing.
In this case, however, the denial seems to check out -- although that's just going on the word of Pakistan's spy agencies, who have themselves been linked to the attack:
But residents of the impoverished town of 7,000 people, 90 miles south of the Pakistani city of Lahore, said they had never heard of Kasab or his father."Absolutely wrong, we don't know Mohammed Ajmal Kasab and no person having such name lives here," said butcher Mohammed Ramzan, 60. Ramzan said he had seen Kasab's photo on TV and was certain he had never seen him before.
Mayor Ghulam Mustafa said police and investigators from Pakistan's spy agencies had also investigated the gunman's link to the town and found nothing.
Oh, well then, he couldn't be from Farid Kot!
Maria said that as a teenager, Kasab become a low-level thief, robbing people at knifepoint.But he dreamed of starting his own gang, and began poking around Lahore, trying to buy guns. He was put in touch with a man who offered to send him for weapons training, and he readily agreed, Maria said.
Kasab soon found himself in a camp run by Lashkar-e-Taiba, Maria said. Lashkar, a banned Pakistani militant group, has alleged ties to Pakistan's powerful intelligence agencies.
Though he had always been a religious Muslim, Kasab had never ascribed to the violent ideology of some extremist groups, Maria said.
That quickly changed in the camp.
If he rejected the "violent ideology of some extremist groups," how exactly did he "find himself" in an Lashkar-e-Taiba camp in the first place?
"The moment he came under their wings, the indoctrination started. And that's when he decided there should be some meaning to his life and jihad (holy war) was his calling," he said.For 18 months, Kasab was put through a multiphase training program at different camps in Pakistan. It started with physical fitness and jihadi indoctrination, proceeded to small arms lessons, moved on to explosives training and eventually to classes in handling assault rifles, Maria said. He was also trained in how to navigate a boat.
The training was done in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani-controlled Kashmir and the mountain town of Mansehra, in Pakistan's deeply conservative North West Frontier Province, which was a center of training for Kashmiri militants before Pakistan began its peace process with India. Some was also done in Murdike, the base of the Islamist charity Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which has been accused by the U.S. of being the front group for Lashkar-e-Taiba. [...]
All the men were given fake IDs from Indian universities to confuse authorities about the source of the attacks, Maria said.
None expected to survive the attack, he said: "It was a suicide mission."...
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Things haven't changed since the 13th/ 14th century when Marco Polo (1254-1324) travelled through Islamised Central Asia:
"The Muslims in Persia are wicked and treacherous.
"The law which their prophet Mohamet [Muhammad] has given them lays down that any harm they may do to one who does not accept their law, and any appropriation of his goods, is no sin at all..
:And if they suffer death at the hands of Christians, they are accounted martyrs.
"For this reason they would be great wrongdoers, if it were not for the government". From Penguin 1958 edition of The Travels of Marco Polo, pp 57-58.
And here's Montaigne's 'take' on the Assassins, in the 16th century:
"The Assassins, a people dependent on Phoenicia, are considered among Mohammedans as being of supreme devoutness and purity of morals.
"They hold that the most certain way to deserve Paradise is to kill someone of a different religion."
Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592)
In the life of this miserable Mohammedan from Pakistan we see both features of Mohammedanism exemplified: the permission of theft (who did he steal from, I wonder?) and the principle that the murder of a non-Muslim is the Muslim murderer's ticket to Paradise.