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Before They Were Bombers, They Were Just Boys
Maggie Gallagher
July 19, 2005
The terrorists are coming.
They are coming for your sons and daughters. But especially your sons.
Islamist terrorists blowing up London subways and buses left 55 bodies of both sexes and all races and religions gruesomely twisted beyond recognition. But first, they twisted the minds of four young men beyond their mothers’ recognition.
My heart aches for Mrs. Hussain. She is the mother of 18-year-old bomber Hasib Mir Hussain. He was once an ordinary kid whom some mastermind, somewhere, helped turn into a ticking time bomb, a killer, a walking corpse. It was Mrs. Hussain’s call to the police, asking their help in locating her missing son, that gave the British police the break they needed to identify the four bombers.
How much worse than her worst fears must the truth have turned out to be? "We, the family of Hasib Mir Hussain, are devastated by the events of the past few days," the family said in a statement issued last Friday. "We are having difficulty taking this in. Our thoughts are with all the bereaved families, and we have to live ourselves with the loss of our son in these difficult circumstances."
Germaine Lindsay’s mother, Mary McLeod, converted to Islam at her son’s behest: She told reporters from her home in Jamaica: "I haven’t stopped crying for all the people who died. And I cried for my son. I have to deal not only with his death, but with the fact that he may have killed all those people."
Mohammad Sidique Khan’s family issued a statement remembering the 30-year-old married husband and father as a "kind and caring member of our family" who "may have been brainwashed into carrying out such an atrocity."
They are coming for your husbands and fathers too.
Just like they came for John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban," that 20-year-old scion of loving, normal parents in Marin County, California, whose father told the media after his son was captured on an Afghan battlefield, "He’s not someone that I would have ever imagined could pick up a gun at all."
Who or what will stop them, these nameless forces seducing well-beloved sons to the darkest acts?
Tony Blair called on all Britons, including the Muslim community, to call evil by its name, to look it in the face. "What we are confronting here is an evil ideology. Their cause is not founded on an injustice. It is founded on a belief, one whose fanaticism is such that it cannot be moderated, it can’t be remedied, it has to be stood up to." That means, he said, "not just arguing against their terrorism, but their politics and their perversion of religious faith. It means exposing as the rubbish it is the propaganda about America and its allies wanting to punish Muslims or eradicate Islam. It means championing our values of freedom, tolerance and respect for others. It means explaining why the suppression of women and the disdain for democracy are wrong."
What will stop the terrorists?
Tony Blair is right that in the end it will be the Muslim community that destroys the breeding grounds for domestic terrorists. They call it a death-cult, but young men do not long for death; they long for glory. What punctures the romanticizing of mass murder? In Northern Ireland, it took the McCartney sisters breaking the code of silence to stand up for their murdered brother to finally (perhaps) break the tacit support that permitted the IRA to organize.
In my fantasies, I see a campaign featuring the voices of mothers. Someone like Mrs. Hussain crying out an anguished warning:
They are coming for our sons and daughters. But especially for our sons: To turn our beloved children into things that kill without mercy.
We have to stop them. Now.
Forum posts
26 July 2005, 08:44
American/British airforce terrorist killed more then 55 people in Iraq. And yet this "human beings" take pride in their doing. So, why are your mourning your death our eyes are dry, because we have weeped at more then 128.000 bombed friends and relatives. Why are you shocked? Your murdering us, has become reality of our lives!
We have the same feelings as you, so tell me why are you allowing the british government to kill us?
26 July 2005, 10:59
Just after the London bombs, several people commented,
"How could they do that, so young, how could they kill "innocents".
The same "innocents" who paid taxes to blair and bush, who recruited hundreds of thousands of men and women, who then bombed and shot their way through Iraq and Afghanistan.
The same "innocents" in whose name the muslims of this world have endured cruise missiles, depleted uranium, napalm, cluster bombs, machine gun fire and snipers.
On reflection, one would note, that on the whole, the muslims have shown far more restraint and tolerance than any of the jews and christians that have been flying the bombers, more compassion than the artificers who aimed the cruise missiles, more grace than the redneck ploughboys that drive the humvees, more human kindness than the corporate thugs that planned the invasion of Iraq.
If you believe that it is not about oil, then perhaps you also believe that a bewhiskered old fart created this planet, and that women were created from the rib of man, and should not be entitled to equal rights.
26 July 2005, 12:04
Question: Do we know that they *were* suicide bombers? I know that they are spoken of as such, but there are still too many unanswered questions that no one is looking at. They were more likely dupes, or even innocent of any crime, and were simply used as fall guys for the *real* bombers, whoever they are. This is character assasination on top of murder!
28 July 2005, 05:40
homicide bombers do their monsterous deeds on street corners, bus stops, train stations, tourist attractions, night clubs, planes, ships and any other population hub in the wheels of world society. it’s hard to imagine them as the jump roping and bike riding little people that they once were.
maggie gallagher makes a good point here. the thought of the devastating impact islamofascist terrorist gangs must have on the mothers and fathers of these kids is utterly gut-wrenching.