Dear Mr. Editor,
I have written this letter to voice my opinion about Amir Taheri's "The Semantics of Murder." First of all thank you for including it in your publication, I personally think it is a very interesting topic to explore, wondering how the people with ties to the Muslim world view these suicide bombers. As Taheri points out, we can see that the leaders of the Muslim community voice their opinions for suicide bombings, and even encourage it their children. I find it fascinating that by doing so, a Muslim is breaking one of the five unforgivable sins, which is to commit suicide. It's amazing how someone so young can be brainwashed into committing acts of terrorism for their religion, even though it involves going against the religion to do so.
Taheri explains that the organizations that fuel these bombing use other words in their language to justify going against unforgivable sins. Because they cannot call themselves martyrs, they describe themselves as "martyr-like," once again proving to me that if they don't see themselves as religious heroes, the people don't either. He continues to point out that these terrorists try to coin different terms of themselves without tying it to their religion if they can.
It seems that the leaders are so obsessed with destroying Israel, they would condemn their own followers. Taheri makes an interesting point here, even though these leaders appear to condone these acts of terrorism they always make sure it is someone else's child. This to me proves that they know that these acts of terror oppose their religion, so they make sure to doom the soul of a person who is not a relative.
When I review the facts I can't see anything but evil deeds, these leaders are killing their own while they sleep nice and cozy at night. I personally cannot see how anyone, even a member of the Muslim community, can call the suicide bombers anything other than terrorists. Taheri asks at the beginning of this article, are the bombers seen as martyrs to their people? I feel that the answer should be no. I think Taheri does an excellent job pointing out these organizations don't speak for the entirety of Muslims, they are simply people who wish to destroy everything that they dislike or hate.
Again thank you for including this in your publication, I feel it spreads some light on the mostly unknown world of Muslims and its connection to terrorism.
Sincerely,
Austin Kaylor
I find it fascinating myself that these terrorist can easily say that they are acting with pure hears and they are doing their attacks in the name of their god. You pointed out one hypocrisy about these acts being a deadly sin and I am about to point out another one for you. In times of war all governments follow the common notion that killing/murder is not a crime if you so happen to be thrown into combat while you are in your respective country’s military however, in these terrorist’s religion they can murder as long as it is not out of anger or hate yet these recent terrorist acts have all been out of hatred.
ReplyDeleteThese violent acts of terrorism are pure hypocrisy! These terrorist go on and on about doing these acts and say they are righteous acts when they murder hundreds upon thousands of innocents. I say if you are going to be attacking a nation you should at least have the balls to declare an act of war to prevent casualties. Terrorist are nothing but pure cowards who act upon selfish and childish desires. They have no honest logical reason for their acts. If you are willing to act out in a way that may cause pointless casualties to suffer then I see no reason that you should be treated with any respect or even as a human in return. No one should be able to go and take people’s lives with so little regard as these terrorist do. I do pray that these selfish teachings of terrorism will not remain so that future generations will not become tainted by unjustified hatred.
I do understand a nation’s hate for another if they just come in and take control for years. I find that our war with Iraq and Pakistan was completely pointless and could have been avoided which could have saved not just a lot of our soldiers lives put the people of Iraq and Pakistan’s lives as well. The amount of resources and unnecessary lives wasted was a true mortal blow to both sides.
I too found this article very thought provoking. One of the worst parts of this article is in the second paragraph, where the foreign ministers got together to move away from terrorism and ended up endorsing suicide bombers, the exact opposite of their original intentions.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that the leaders keep their own children out of suicide bombing speaks loudly to me. If this is such dignified, great way to go out, why aren't they all lining up their children, and even themselves to do these deeds? Why always someone else?
There is nothing worse than when people interpret religion for their own agendas. If suicide and murder is wrong, then it is wrong. There is no "well, it's ok if...". This goes for all religions, not just Islam.
I also agree with Ryan, the Iraq war did turn out to be a waste of human lives and U.S. resources, fought for an imaginary cause.
Wow, don’t some of these behaviors remind you of “Animal Farm”? For instance, the way the leaders of some Muslim countries blame Israel for all that’s bad in the world is similar to the way the pigs in “Animal Farm” used snowball. They choose a common enemy to blame for everything that goes wrong, even some things they are responsible for themselves, to unite the people and deflect blame away from themselves.
ReplyDeleteThen there is the little problem of changing the “commandments”. It’s not really wrong for pigs to sleep in beds like the commandment said originally; it’s just wrong for them to sleep in beds with sheets! In the same way the foreign ministers tweak the Muslim doctrine just enough to make the sin of suicide acceptable. I can see them sitting around a table discussing the finer points of difference between “witness” and “affidavit”. Again, because of political expediency they are willing to accept the unacceptable. It really has nothing to do with their religion.
At last we come to “some pigs are more equal than others”. I have often wondered myself why Osama Bin Laden is still hanging around if suicide bombers are so well respected. Perhaps the enticements of heaven don’t appeal to him because he has all the enticements he needs here on planet Earth. The same could be said of the leaders of Hamas or Islamic Jihad. I love the last paragraph of the essay, “The Semantics of Murder”. Arafat’s wife says she’d offer her own son for suicide attacks, but she doesn’t have one. This would almost make me laugh if it weren’t so sad.