The entire world watched in horror on Monday as police stormed a café in Australia to take out one Islamic terrorist – who was holding 17 people hostage. Miraculously, despite all of the terror that incident inflicted, only two innocent people were killed.
Now, just a day later, comes this humbling reminder that, when it comes to Islamic terrorism, those who practice Islam have far more to fear:
Taliban gunmen stormed a military-run school in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar on Tuesday, killing at least 141 people, mostly children, before Pakistani officials declared a military operation to clear the school over.
The overwhelming majority of the victims were students at the school, which instructs grades 1-10. Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif condemned the assault and rushed to Peshawar to show his support for the victims.
(The Associated Press, December 16, 2014)
It speaks volumes, however, that American media are dedicating more coverage today to people now mourning in Australia than to people still wailing in Pakistan. Hell, even rank media speculation about another presidential matchup between a Bush (Jeb) and a Clinton (Hillary) is cutting into coverage of this massacre in Pakistan.
To be fair, though, such terrorist attacks are nothing new in Pakistan; whereas this was the first such attack in Australia. In fact, Pakistan has suffered the equivalent of ten 9/11 terrorist attacks since, well, 9/11.
President Asif Ali Zardari vowed to continue Pakistan’s fight against militancy while Taliban attackers laid siege to a police station in Dera Ismail Khan in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. ‘Terrorists violate both human and divine values by inflicting death and destruction on fellow human beings. They have no religion,’ he said.
Zardari said that militant attacks had killed 35,000 people in Pakistan, 5,000 of them law enforcement personnel, and caused material damage totalling $67 billion.
(The International New York Times, June 26, 2011)
It is particularly distressing that innocent women and children are so often the targets of Islamic terrorists, who proudly proclaim to kill in the name of Allah.
Not to mention even more deadly Muslim-on-Muslim attacks in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as those now inflicting terror throughout several countries in Africa.
In any event, the routine nature of this latest terrorist attack might explain the lack of sustained media coverage. After all, such attacks in Pakistan have become even more commonplace than school shootings in the United States.
But, as I stated in my commentary on the terrorist attack in Australia, I see no point in commenting on the medieval, dogmatic and bloodthirsty ideology that evidently inspires these terrorists. What’s more, I fear law-enforcement authorities will prove no more capable of stopping terrorist attacks in Pakistan than they are of stopping school shootings here.
Which is why all we can do is send our thoughts and prayers out to all those affected in this case.
That said, I’m acutely aware that there’s nothing Islamic about terrorism. Islam, by definition, is “a religion of peace” after all.
The problem, however, is that far too many political leaders in Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have sanctioned all manner of terrorism, including the subjugation of women, in the name of Allah; while far too many religious leaders in those countries have failed to condemn it – out of fear, I suppose, of going to jail or losing their head.
More generally, there’s the Taliban-like behavior far too many purportedly mainstream Muslims exhibit:
Muslims have been engaged in what is fast becoming an ironic and perverse religious rite; namely, defending perceived offenses to Islam and the Prophet Muhammad by rioting, looting, and threatening to kill!
Their latest acts of holy vigilantism were triggered – unwittingly, one assumes – by Pope Benedict XVI’s comments on a fourteenth-century Christian emperor’s (evidently perspicacious and prescient) condemnation of the fanatical worship the Prophet Muhammad inspires…
It is undeniable that what most people see today of the religion Muhammad brought is precisely the evil and inhuman things Emperor Paleologos condemned over 500 years ago. And, the irony is not lost on many of us that the bellicose way Muslims have reacted to the Pope’s comments only affirms the emperor’s condemnation.
(“Pope Benedict Committed No Sin with Comments on Muhammad, and He Should Not Apologize,” The iPINIONS Journal, September 16, 2007)
Perhaps most troubling of all, though, there’s the prevailing suspicion that the country’s notoriously perfidious Inter-Services Intelligence spy agency, the ISI, cultivated the jihadi menace the “Pakistani Taliban” has wreaked with impunity for decades. And, that the ISI did so simply to undermine the enviable influence India and the United States wield throughout the region, including in Pakistan itself.
For these reasons, I’m obliged to note that there might be a little reaping what you sow in Muslim-on-Muslim violence … in the name of Allah.
Related commentaries:
Lone wolf terrorizes Australia…
Pope Benedict…