Islamic Unabombers

A while back, some Islamic leader or another pointed out that while Israel and the West have A-bombs, the Middle East has the “children bomb.” By which he meant that the demographics of the Middle East tended to favor Islam. Muslims, he thought, would simply outbreed non-Muslims.

As of last week, those Muslims who favor violent jihad have another weapon at their disposal: Islamic Unabombers.

This is more or less a new phenomenon; whereby seemingly law-abiding Muslim citizens (usually of Middle Eastern origin), despite having been born and bred in a modern liberal democracy, suddenly turn against it to commit mass murder and collective suicide. All in the name of nobody-knows-what.

Bombings by IRA terrorists are nothing new to London and in the US the Oklahoma bombing is still fresh in everyone’s memory. But as bad as those bombings were, people could more or less understand why they occurred; could perhaps take some precautions against them. Not so with the London bombers.

The original Unabomber, Theodore John Kaczynski, started sending mail bombs to computer engineers and universities around 1978, but he had dropped out of society some ten years earlier, when he left a teaching position in a major university. Kaczynski had some half-baked ideas that were essentially Luddite in nature and he was later diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. He published a lot of his ideas in crank letters to newspapers outlets. He also happened to be a mathematical genius.

Prior to Kaczynski’s first acts of terror, he had no criminal record, nor any indication that he would someday turn to homicide bombing in order to make his point about industrial societies. In other words there were no red lights flashing anywhere about Kaczynski’s future plans.

Cut now to the London bombers. There were no flashing red lights in their backgrounds either. They were apparently perfectly normal young men, which is all the more disturbing. The London attacks too were not foreseen by any of the friends and relatives of the bombers.

Is there any explanation for their acts?

The Prime Minister, Mr. Blair has called the serial bombings in London as an attack upon the civilized world. He also said in a recent speech that certain brands of Islam are “evil” and in contrast to “true” Islam. But how can he be so certain? Muslims themselves disagree about Islam. Some Muslims feel that violent Jihad is true Islam. In any event, the London attacks were carried out by men who believe in the violent side of Islam. Which implies that to certain Muslims, feelings of Islamic unity are trumping traditions of liberal democracy, at a very fast pace.

And there are a lot of Muslim immigrants living in the democratic nations of Europe today.

What exactly may some of them be thinking; or planning?

The invasion of Iraq certainly hasn’t helped matters. It’s simply created one vast terrorist training camp, offering on-the-job training, to those who feel that violence is the only way to restore the grandeur of Islamic civilization, as well as kick the West out of the Middle East.

The challenge for the democracies of Western Europe an North America is how to plan against terrorists acts, without losing the very freedoms we in the West value.

In other words, can national and international laws governing freedom of religion declare that religious concepts that preach intolerance towards other faiths and their adherents are illegal? Tony Blair has proposed reining in Islamic preachers that urge violence. Would the government have to regulate Islamic seminaries so they will omit the concepts of violent Jihad while teaching the Koran to youngsters? Could such a program succeed? History would argue against it.

One thing most people agree on, and that is another attack is surely in the cards and there is little, at present, anyone can do about it.

Punditwalla--