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We said in our first comment that we would support the United States in its "war on terrorism" until the point when it became clear innocent Muslims were being killed in that war. Well, sadly, innocent Muslims have already been and are still being killed by American and British missiles and bombs. We are shocked and saddened by this totally unjustified, but not totally unexpected, turn of events. As a result we do at this point, as we said we would, withdraw our support for the United States in its "war on terrorism". We do, of course, still condemn terrorism and criminal violence in all its many forms; but, we consider the murder of innocent people as an action sanctioned as the official policy of militarily powerful governments perpetrated against the already devastated, innocent citizens of a materially backward and virtually defenseless nation to be an evil of significantly greater magnitude than the murder of innocent people by a few terrorists. . The United States which controls most of the world media, as it does most other things in today's world, is obviously not allowing the world's worried citizens to know how bad things really are. The American military and political leaders keep assuring us that this is NOT a war against the people of Afghanistan but against terrorists, that this is NOT a war against Islam but against evil, and innocents are NOT being killed. America has its seemingly endless supply of propaganda experts and psychological warfare specialists, known respectively as 'spin doctors' and 'mind benders', hard at work making sure every word and every so-called fact released to the public represents the NOT the truth, but those words and facts presented to the public must always and only be consistent with of the perceived interests of the United States There seems to be an important misunderstanding of just who exactly are the 'innocent citizens'. Leaders of all nations have been speaking only of 'innocent civilians'; we consider this to be an outdated concept. In the past it seems all military personnel have been considered as a class separate from 'innocent civilians', where the fact that they are defenders of their country makes them legitimate targets. It would seem more right and just to include military personnel in the same class as 'innocent civilians' if their government has not participated in an attack on some other government or an attack on that other government's citizens, and that their government has not declared war on some other government. At this point in the case of Afghanistan we believe their military personnel, based on a complete lack of any evidence of their involvement in the attack on America, fall into the same protected category as 'innocent civilians'. It would appear that Afghanistan's(as separate from Os ama bin Laden's and the al-Qaeda organization's) only 'crime' at this point is that the leadership of the nation has refused to accede to the "series of clear and specific demands" made by the President of the United States, George Bush. Using logic and reason to objectively assess the truth(even if we must do so from between the lines) it seems highly likely at this point at least several thousand innocent Afghani people have already died as a direct and indirect consequence of America's "war on terrorism". Unless these attacks on Afghanistan stop we expect the numbers of dead to rise to the tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands. We were asked to cry for the loss of thousands of innocent lives in the attack on America, and we did; now, are the Americans going to offer their tears for the thousands of innocent lives lost in the attack on Afghanistan? We think NOT. One of our resources offers a highly sophisticated understanding of the psychological manipulation of language to effect desired social influence and to achieve devious hidden goals. We are assured by this source that from the beginning of this "war on terrorism" there has been a subtle manipulation of language used to demean Islam and Muslims in such a way as to make the true practice of Islam or the right understanding of Islam very difficult to achieve among Muslims and non-Muslims alike. All this is happening as the Western leadership keeps up their ubiquitous public assurances that nothing in the "war on terrorism" can be construed as an attack on Islam. It is our firm belief that if the Islamic world does not recognize that we Muslims, and the beliefs and practices of our religion, are under a deviously powerful attack then we will find ourselves in a much more 'Americanized' and much less Islamic world when the "war on terrorism" reaches its eventual finale. On the issue of responsibility for the terrorist attack on America, we remain still unsure of Osama bin Laden's guilt. We do admit, though, that there is almost an embarrassing excess of circumstantial evidence presented against him, but so far not one direct link seems to have been presented, at least publicly. We are probably not alone in wondering how it is possible that a man living in a cave in the mountains of Afghanistan could have carried out the most complicated, well-organized act of terrorism in the history of the world. Then there is the matter of the apparent personal honesty and integrity of the opposing sides, where the banal, cliché ridden propaganda of U.S. President, George Bush's, speech writers, embarrassingly full of informal logical fallacies, those tricks of human communication used to effectively mislead minds and misrepresent truths, make his carefully scripted utterances pale in poor comparison to the sincere, simple, even naïve, honesty in the words of such men as the Taliban's Ambassador to Pakistan, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef. Regardless of whatever failings the Taliban may have, it is hard to picture our brother Abdul Salam Zaeef as anything but a good and pious Muslim man. America has a long and public record of hypocrisy, dishonesty, and betrayal. We hope we never find out that we cannot trust our fellow Muslims, as we fear we cannot trust America. When we consider the call being made for a jihad against America based on Islamic scriptures and traditions, we accept the legal correctness of all the stated arguments for a call to jihad, but we remain unsure whether full consideration of the present circumstances would justify such a call. Among the many benefits of Islam is that it is a very technically correct religion. There are many very complicated aspects concerning whether or not this call to jihad against America is right or wrong at this point which must enter into so important a decision. We do not feel qualified to make such a judgement yet, but if America and its allies keep up what is increasingly looking like a violent criminal attack on the people of Afghanistan we will likely have to conclude that the call for jihad is indeed justified. We do, though, at this point support a call by the governments and people of all the Islamic countries for the United States and its allies to cease immediately all military action again st any persons or governments who had no direct and provable part in the terrorist attack on America. Come on America, please get some true moral consciousness. Do you really think you are hated for your freedoms? You will only be safe when you are loved! (11 October, 2001) P.S: We pray that our comments on the "war on terrorism" have been rightly said. We have expressed our honest opinion and may Allah forgive us if we have failed in any way. As Muslims, we do not want to fight with America and the Western world. We don't want anyone to harm our non-Muslim brothers and sisters. We only want to work in peaceful harmony with America and the non-Muslim nations to right every wrong that presently exists in our world. Preliminary_Comments.doc (36.0 Kb)
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