Suicide bombers cannot be classified by religion
28 July 2005
Many local people will have nodded in recognition when they heard that the Muslim Council of Britain wants "a very prominent inquiry or commission" into the killing of Brazilian electrician Jean Charles de Menezes in a tube train at Stockwell last week.
Witness Mark Whitby told BBC News: "I saw an Asian guy. He ran on to the train, he was hotly pursued by three plain clothes officers…They couldn't have been any more than two or three feet behind him and he half tripped and was half pushed to the floor and the policeman nearest to me had the black automatic pistol in his left hand. He held it down to the guy and unloaded five shots into him."
Mr Whitby may have assumed that the olive-skinned man was an Asian from the fact that not only was he olive-skinned but had just been held to the ground and shot dead by people who turned out to be police.
This is evidently also the assumption of the Muslim Council.
Another reminiscent aspect of the matter was the speed with which the official version came into the public domain.
Even as the breathless Mr Whitby was on air providing News 24 with his account, viewers were being told in authoritative tones that one of the four failed suicide bombers had been eliminated, perhaps in the act of having another go.
The killing of Mr de Menezes was hailed as welcome victory in the war on terror.
One newspaper exulted: "One down, three to go!" At least they balked at splashing "Gotcha!" across the front page.
Northern Ireland people will also be well used to the suggestion that to raise a fuss about the killing of Mr Menezes is to "play into the hands of the terrorists." As if there are fellows out there who will be prompted by protests against innocent citizens being killed by the State to strap themselves in explosives and perpetrate murder. Rather than by the invasion of Iraq, for example.
Many in the North might agree that what particularly "played into the hands of the terrorists" here was locking people up without charge or trial.
Indeed, I recall from 1971 that this played into the hands of many terrorists who hadn't previously been terrorists at all.
Now politicians across the water seem increasingly minded to repeat our experience - while hinting that anybody who raises questions of civil liberties is, yes, "playing into the hands of the terrorists."
On Tuesday, the Prime Minister repeated that he will admit no connection between the London bombs and Iraq.
The bombers might pretend to be angered by Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, he conceded. But this was cynical opportunism, intended to conceal the "evil ideology" (copyright, G W Bush), which really drove them to murder and which must be extirpated.
Asked whether western support for Saudi-style dictatorship might be a factor, Blair was dismissive. We must give not an inch to the notion that the bombers have political objectives. Al Qaida's aim was to impose a regime "more oppressive than anything anyone in this room could even contemplate."
But it is precisely to Saudi Arabia and Iraq that we should look for an understanding of Al Qaida's motivation.
Patrick Cockburn reports in the Independent on the imminent publication of an investigation into the thinking of 300 young Saudis captured en route to fight or blow themselves up in Iraq. This shows that it was overwhelmingly the invasion of Iraq which prompted their decision to die.
The connection between occupied Iraq and suicide bombing is suggested, too, by the fact that there have been more suicide bombings in Iraq in the past 12 months than in all of the rest of the world ever: 12 in Baghdad in one day this month.
Islam may provide some suicide bombers with a sense of peace as they contemplate their own death. All religions serve this sort of function. It is irrational to conclude that suicide bombing can be understood or ended by reference to religion.
Blair's press conference on Tuesday as the hunt for the bombers proceeded was an extended effort at avoiding the main issue, Iraq.