Several people have asked me why I didn’t put up a story yesterday about the blasts in New Delhi that killed 61 people. The answer is that while Indian officials said that the blasts were the work of “terrorists,” they were not specific — and there are terror groups in India that are not jihad groups.
Contrary to what is sometimes claimed of us, we do not rush to judgment here. We don’t even post, as has also been claimed, any crime involving a Muslim. I didn’t post the story about the man who was putting feces on pastries, because I wasn’t sure of his motive — although in that case I think now that I paid insufficient attention to the fact that poisoning food with feces is detailed as a tactic in the Al-Qaeda manual found a few years ago by British intelligence.
In the case of the India bombs, I checked story after story for something more conclusive about the identity of the bombers, and found nothing all day yesterday. However, this piece, “Indian Police Hunt for Clues to ID Bombers,” from Herald News Daily, identifies the tactics as characteristic of the Kashmir jihad group Lashkar-e-Tayyaba.
It’s no surprise, of course, especially since the blasts targeted shoppers preparing for Diwali, but I am not in India at the moment and was not going to make the judgment myself. Anyway, it looks as if these blasts are still more evidence that the arguments moderate Muslim spokesmen advance about the impermissibility in Islam of targeting civilians simply aren’t convincing the jihadists. What are the self-proclaimed moderates going to do about that?
NEW DELHI – Investigators searched Sunday for clues to trace the bombers who killed 61 people in two crowded markets in New Delhi, offering rewards for information and detaining more than 20 people in raids on dozens of small hotels across the capital….
They said they were looking for a man in his 20s who refused to buy a ticket on a bus and got off in the Govindpuri neighborhood, leaving behind a large black bag. When some of the 40 passengers raised an alarm, the driver and bus conductor examined it and threw it out just as the blast occurred, injuring them both. That was the only one of the three explosions in which no one was killed.
Though officials avoided pointing fingers, a leading anti-terrorism expert said the timing and nature of the blasts indicated they were the work of Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, the most feared militant group in Kashmir.
“These are not entirely unexpected. It is a wake up call for all those who think of open borders” between India and Pakistan.
Opening the border is extremely sensitive for India because of a 16-year insurgency by Islamic militants in Kashmir who seek to make the Indian portion independent or unite it with Pakistan.
Pakistan condemned the multiple attacks in New Delhi….
The attacks targeted the many people shopping just days before the festival of Diwali, a major Hindu holiday during which families exchange gifts, light candles and celebrate with fireworks.