CNN By Abdal Hakim Murad is a lecturer in Islamic Studies at the Faculty of Divinity, Cambridge University, England. In 2010 he was voted Britain's most influential Muslim thinker by Jordan's Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Center. His latest book, Bombing without Moonlight, is about the religious meaning of suicide bombing.
The death and disposal of the Middle East's "Dark Lord," was always going to be an iconic moment. Its symbolism would provide a particular twist to the way he was remembered. Doubtless this was realized by President Obama's strategists. Yet there are good reasons, pragmatic as well as idealistic, to suggest that the final showdown with Osama bin Laden was dangerously mismanaged.
The burial at sea was a sad miscalculation. It is not clear where the Pentagon finds its information on Islamic rituals. It cannot ignore, however, the fact that Muslim leaders have found the procedure by which the cadaver was tipped into the sea, following an unspecified Muslim ceremony, entirely unacceptable.
The leading scholarly institution in the Muslim world is Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt. And the Muslim world has heard, with disquiet, Al-Azhar's judgement on the "sea burial." [....]
It would be far better if these Islamic "scholars" would spend their time condemning Osama's murderous life and deserving execution by US forces because he was the world's leading terrorist as leader of Al Qaida, but then again, they consider him a "hero" and emulate and echo his calls for "jihad" against the infidels. Whatever they say should be ignored and deleted.
ReplyDeleteThe way things look right now, Osama will soon be joined at the bottom of the sea by Gadafi and maybe even Asad.
What the Muslim and Arab world have failed to grasp is that the world has had enough of their chauvinist "jihadist" antics.
No one cared when Muslims were slaughtering each other such as in the Iran-Iraq war. No one cared as wars were waged by the Arabs against Israel and Jews died in acts of terror.
But it is an entirely matter to attack the USA as they did on 9/11 in 2001 and other acts of terror against the USA, to kill hundreds of civilians in subways in London and Madrid, to blow up airliners over Scotland and who knows where else. And let's not forget that an Islamic fanatic almost succeeding in assassinating Christianity's Pope John Paul II. All these things add up over time and now they have boiled over and now it is not just the USA, but NATO and the Russians who are fighting Islamic fanatics.
Then when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait 20 years ago threatening the West's vital petroleum supplies the worst Arab blunder was made and Bush I did what he had to do. Then 9/11 pushed Bush II to finish off what his father started as Al Qaida, Islamofascism, Iraq and Afghanistan were now in America's gun-sights.
Iran's nuclear saber-rattling harms the cause of Islam as the world takes note of this reckless aggressive streak that threatens all humanity.
The global economy and growth of the information age has stoked the desire for change within the Arab and Islamic world itself and cannot be turned back as plain people want to be like everyone else and not be subjected only to Islamic fanaticism, the West's Twitter and Facebook trump the Arab tyrants, as can be seen in what happened recently in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, and all over the Arab world stoking the ongoing people's uprisings in Libya and Syria and even in the holy Saudi Arabia.
The USA is still at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now it has shown that it will not hold back from doing what it has to do even within the borders of a nuclear-armed Islamic Pakistan to eliminate the like of a Bin laden and his cohorts. It was from Pakistan that Islamic murderers came to India to kill hundreds in the recent Mumbai Massacre. India is also tired of Islamic craziness.
The Muslims and Arabs need to wake up and smell the coffee. It is said that the Mashgiach Ruchani of Yeshiva Torah Voda'as, HaRav Moshe Wolfson, shlita has stated recently that "the sar ['guardian angel'] of Yishmael has fallen" and it sure looks like it as the Islamic and Arab world implodes to their own bewilderment.