The London Blasts: Media Review

DAY 15: Friday 22 July 2005

THE SECOND SET OF BOMBINGS

What is known

Muslims on the train

Muslim anger: 'We should kill them'

A connection to the Qur'an?

Karen Armstrong: The Qur'an

THE SECOND SET OF BOMBINGS

WHAT IS KNOWN

'Police said that four near-simultaneous minor explosions hit the transport system, exactly two weeks after more than 50 people died in attacks on the Underground and bus networks.'

'There were no deaths in the latest attacks, said Sir Ian Blair, Metropolitan Police commissioner, but “clearly the intention must have been to kill”.' (FT, page 1)

A map of the explosions is available from the BBC.

'Bombs that had been carried on to three tube trains and a bus at different points across the capital did not explode, apparently because their detonators, which caused small blasts when they were activated, failed to blow up the rest of the devices.'

'At least one of the bombs was being carried on a tube train in a rucksack by a man who shouted in surprise when it failed fully to explode, and who appears to have then vanished in the scenes of panic and confusion that followed. A second was carried on to a tube by a man who dodged fellow passengers and fled when its detonator apparently went off.' (Guardian, page 1)

'Unlike the events of July 7, when 52 people and four bombers died, the explosions were weak, apparently the result of malfunctions. Police were hopeful that forensic evidence from the scene would lead them to the cell behind the attacks.'

'Even in failure, the nature of the terrorists was evident in their tactics. Witnesses said that one of the terrorists was standing beside a woman holding a baby when he triggered his bomb as the train pulled into the Oval Tube station. The small explosion indicated that the detonator had not ignited the explosives in his back pack. He was chased by passengers but escaped.' (Telegraph, page 1)

'Detectives have established from witness accounts that at least two of the men who carried out the attacks were astonished to be alive after the detonations systems for the explosives failed.'

'Each of their bombs was smaller and fitted with a homemade detonation device, all of which failed to trigger the full blasts. Scientists are also looking at the possibility that if the explosive did come from the same batch as that used on July 7, its quality may have deteriorated in the past two weeks.'

'Police praised three men, believed to be two officers and a member of the public, who tackled the bomber at the Oval, ripping his rucksack from his back and securing vital evidence.' (Times, page 2)

'Unlike the July 7 bombs, the explosions did not take place at rush-hour, nor did they produce many casualties. The disruption caused was more short-lived and on a smaller scale.'

'Perhaps, the most disconcerting aspect of the incidents is that they took place just two weeks after the worst terrorist attack on English soil killed 56 people, setting off a massive international investigation and putting London on its highest security level since September 2001.' (FT, page 2)

MUSLIMS ON THE TRAIN

The Times carried these comments from two Muslims who were in the Warren Street train:

Mohammed Alum, 30, a retail manager from Bethnal Green, East London, said a burning smell began to drift through his carriage.

He said: “I had just dropped off my wife at her office near Oxford Street and was heading to my office in Camden, North London. She is expecting our second child and so I thought that I would escort her to work and have a quick bite to eat before carrying on to my office.

“I left her in a very good mood — the sun was shining and we had a sandwich for lunch in a leafy square — but like most people who take the Tube these days, I was worried about getting on the Underground again.

“Although I was not caught in an explosion two weeks ago, I was stuck in the dark for 20 minutes on a Northern Line train and have felt panicky on the Tube ever since.

“Sat opposite me was a white woman in her forties with two young children, and next to me was a black man in African dress. We nodded to each other as I got on, in the way that Londoners do a little more often since the bombs.

“As my train pulled out of Warren Street, I heard a sound, like a muffled explosion, to my left and immediately everyone let out a shout, asking what the hell was going on. The woman opposite me hugged her two young children to her, and the black man stood up and rushed to the carriage’s connecting doors to try and see what was going on.

“Then, a smell drifted through the doors of burning plastic. I could not see any smoke, but my eyes began to sting, maybe out of fright. Someone shouted that it was a bomb, and then the panic started. Some people lay on the floor, others started pulling the emergency cord and I said a prayer to myself, while looking around for some way off the train. But the doors to the platform were shut.

“Then, the doors connecting our carriage to the next flew open and a stampede of people came through. Someone fell on the floor but there was no opportunity to help him and he was trodden on. By this stage the doors of the carriage that lead on to the platform were still closed, but then the African man started to wedge them open.

“Everyone was screaming and shouting. All I could think about was my wife and child and my brother, who is ill at the moment, and I began to panic too. I started to push the African man away from the doors but he held my shoulders and told me to calm down.

“The woman with the children was still sitting in her chair and the African man went back to get her. I got her two kids. By the time that we fought our way back to the doors they had been opened and everyone was streaming on to the platform.

“We set the children on to the platform but they were swept up in the mass of people running for the exit.Me and the African man got out into the air at about 1pm and I ran, desperately trying to find a telephone to call my wife. I was so relieved to hear her voice that I could not really speak.

“If these latest bombers also turn out to be Muslims, I hope that they are sent to prison for a very long time. They are not true Muslims. They are criminals, using fear as a weapon.

“I might be shaken up for a few days, but I hope to be on the Tube again in a couple of days. That is how I will show my defiance.”

Sofiane Mohellebi, 35, a Muslim retail worker from Paris who is living in Walthamstow, East London, was also on the train.

He said: “I had been for a job interview in a store this morning, a job that I really wanted to get. I was still thinking about the interview when I boarded the Tube train at Oxford Street, and began heading home. It was a usual afternoon on the Tube, hot, sticky and a little crowded. I managed to get a seat, and there were people from many countries sat around me, including a group of young American women carrying shopping bags from West End clothes stores.

“It is difficult to get on to a Tube carriage without thinking of the bombs two weeks ago, but you push it to the back of your mind. You think that it cannot happen again so soon after the first explosions. I was reading my book on my lap, when we were at Warren Street station, and I heard other people talking about a burning smell. And then I could smell it too. Someone said, ‘Oh no, not again’ and then everyone started to panic. A lot of the women in my carriage left their shoes so they could run along the platform. I began to run with everyone else, trying to get out of the station. I don’t know what came over me, but because all of these women had taken off their shoes so that they could run, I picked them up to return them after I had got outside.

“By the time I reached the open air, the place was surrounded by police. I looked down, and in my hand I had all of these shoes.

“I am a Muslim, and I did think about what is going on in the name of religion. I am angry that people say that this is the way to change the world.”

MUSLIM RAGE: 'WE SHOULD KILL THEM'

The Times also carries these comments from Muslims in Brick Lane:

Nural Amin, 28, standing, angry and anxious, near a local mosque with four friends, said: “The people that did this are not Muslims. The people who did this — we should kill them. They are enemies of humanity. The vast majority of Muslims have nothing to do with this, but these people are giving us all a bad name. We are all suspects now.”

Another friend, Shabir Ahmed, 38, predicted: “If you have two more bombings like this, and more bloodshed, you will see the rise of the BNP. Muslims will get deported from this country.”

Mustaq Ahmed, 39, who had stood near by listening, nodded. “It has been very difficult for Muslims for the past two weeks, now it is about to become nearly impossible,” he said.

At a newsagent’s shop, Shah Malik, 41, who has run the business for five years, stood behind his till, surveying a deserted store. Mr Malik said that lunch hour was his peak business time and, before the bombings on July 7, he would usually expect to have about 250 customers coming through his door.

“Business has been very bad for the last two weeks,” Mr Malik said. “I have seen my takings go down by around 40 per cent. People don’t come here any more. Maybe they are scared of another bomb. Maybe they don’t want to mix with Muslims any more.”

A CONNECTION TO THE QUR'AN?

As we noted in an earlier Media Review, the timing of the first set of blasts at 08:50am may have been a reference to Chapter 8, verse 50 of the Qur'an (traditionally transliterated as 'Koran'). Here is a translation:

8:50 'If thou couldst see, when the angels take the souls of the Unbelievers (at death), (How) they smite their faces and their backs, (saying): "Taste the penalty of the blazing Fire-'

If the timing of the second set of bombings is from the same group, one might think a verse in Chapter 12 might be similarly significant - the timing of the attacks was around 12:20am.

However Chapter 12 is concerned with the attempted seduction of Joseph by his master's wife. The two possible relevant verses are:

12:20 'The (Brethren) sold him for a miserable price, for a few dirhams counted out: in such low estimation did they hold him!'

12:22 'When Joseph attained His full manhood, We gave him power and knowledge: thus do We reward those who do right.'

The latter seems more likely. Neither verse seems quite as appropriate as Chapter 8, verse 50, suggesting that a connection with the Qur'an may not have been as significant to the second group of attempted suicide bombers, and therefore that the two groups may not have the same instructions or principles guiding them.

It goes without saying that the suicide bombers' decision to connect the first wave of attacks with a verse in the Qur'an (if that was the meaning of the timing) was their own decision, their own interpretation. The bombing was carried out by human beings, not by a book. It was carried out by a group of human beings, not by a religion. 56 people were killed by four fanatics, not by a community.

KAREN ARMSTRONG: THE QUR'AN

Religious scholar Karen Armstrong wrote, a few weeks after 11 September 2001 in Time magazine:

When the Prophet Muhammad brought the inspired scripture known as the Koran to the Arabs in the early 7th century A.D., a major part of his mission was devoted precisely to bringing an end to the kind of mass slaughter we witnessed in New York City and Washington.

Pre-Islamic Arabia was caught up in a vicious cycle of warfare, in which tribe-fought tribe in a pattern of vendetta and counter vendetta. Muhammad himself survived several assassination attempts, and the early Muslim community narrowly escaped extermination by the powerful city of Mecca.

The Prophet had to fight a deadly war in order to survive, but as soon as he felt his people were probably safe, he devoted his attention to building up a peaceful coalition of tribes and achieved victory by an ingenious and inspiring campaign of nonviolence. When he died in 632, he had almost single-handedly brought peace to war-torn Arabia.

Because the Koran was revealed in the context of an all-out war, several passages deal with the conduct of armed struggle.

Warfare was a desperate business on the Arabian Peninsula. A chieftain was not expected to spare survivors after a battle, and some of the Koranic injunctions seem to share this spirit. Muslims are ordered by God to 'slay (enemies] wherever you find them!" (4: 89).

Extremists such as Osama bin Laden like to quote such verses but do so selectively. They do not include the exhortations to peace, which in almost every case follow these more ferocious passages: "Thus, if they let you be, and do not make war on you, and offer you peace, God does not allow you to harm them' (4: 90).

In the Koran, therefore, the only permissible war is one of self-defense. Muslims may not begin hostilities (2:190). Warfare is always evil, but sometimes you have to fight in order to avoid the kind of persecution that Mecca inflicted on the Muslims (2:191; 2: 217) or to preserve decent values (4: 75; 22: 40).

The Koran quotes the Torah, the Jewish scriptures, which permits people to retaliate eye for eye, tooth for tooth, but like the Gospels, the Koran suggests that it is meritorious to forgo revenge in a spirit of charity (5: 45). Hostilities must be brought to an end as quickly as possible and must cease the minute the enemy sues for peace (2: 192-3).

Islam is not addicted to war, and jihad is not one of its 'pillars," or essential practices. The primary meaning of the word jihad is not "holy war' but "struggle." It refers to the difficult effort that is needed to put God's will into practice at every level personal and social as well as political.

A very important and much quoted tradition has Muhammad telling his companions as they go home after a battle, "We are returning from the lesser jihad [the battle] to the greater jihad,' the far more urgent and momentous task of extirpating wrongdoing from one's own society and one's own heart.

Islam did not impose itself by the sword. In a statement in which the Arabic is extremely emphatic, the Koran insists, "There must be no coercion in matters of faith!" (2: 256). Constantly Muslims are enjoined to respect Jews and Christians, the "People of the Book" who worship the same God (29:46).

In words quoted by Muhammad in one of his last public sermons, God tells all human beings, "O people! We have formed you into nations and tribes so that you may know one another" (49:13)-not to conquer, convert, subjugate, revile or slaughter but to reach out toward others with intelligence and understanding.
So why the suicide bombing, the hijacking and the massacre of innocent civilians?

Far from being endorsed by the Koran, this killing violates some of its most sacred precepts. But during the 20th century, the militant form of piety often known as fundamentalism erupted in every major religion as a rebellion against modernity.

Every fundamentalist movement I have studied in Judaism, Christianity and Islam is convinced that liberal, secular society is determined to wipe out religion. Fighting, as they imagine, a battle for survival, fundamentalists often feel justified in ignoring the more compassionate principles of their faith.

But in amplifying the more aggressive passages that exist in all our scriptures, they distort the tradition.

It would be as grave a mistake to see Osama bin Laden as an authentic representative of Islam as to consider James Kopp, the alleged killer of an abortion provider in Buffalo, N.Y., a typical Christian or Baruch Goldstein, who shot 29 worshipers in the Hebron mosque in 1994 and died in the attack, a true martyr of Israel.

The vast majority of Muslims, who are horrified by the atrocity of Sept. 11, must reclaim their faith from those who have so violently hijacked it.

Karen Armstrong, a former Catholic nun, is the author of Islam, a Short History, The History of God, and Muhammad, among other books.

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