Today marks the 21st anniversary of 56 totally innocent Londoners being killed for absolutely no logical reason, by 4 misguided and frankly, really, really bad Muslims, who detonated bombs in 3 underground tubes and one double decker bus.
I say ‘really bad’ Muslims, because you don’t need to be a genius or a saint to read the Quran and realise that killing innocent people will lead you into Hell… NOT Heaven.
52 people of 18 nationalities were killed and nearly 800 were injured in the attacks. Plus the 4 attackers who committed suicide as part of the attack.
Take a moment to let that sink in.
Do you live in London?
If so you probably take the underground or the bus all the time.
These guys just went in there and suicide-bombed them.
Some people lost limbs. Others lost their loved ones.
As if the sin of mass-murder and suicide isn’t bad enough, they claimed that they were doing it for ‘Islam’. In a video taped statement, the eldest of the group – a 30 year old said:
“Our religion is Islam, obedience to the one true God and following the footsteps of the final prophet messenger.”
Uggghh… that religion, the One True God and the Final Messenger (peace & blessings upon him), teach the exact OPPOSITE of what you did!
And now by saying that, you’ve brought all of us into it. Nice one, ‘bro’.
They were so indoctrinated, they even thought there would be many more attacks from normal Muslims all over the West. It seems like they literally didn’t realise they had been indoctrinated and played for fools by some kind of cult-leader.
Probably by that really famous one.
What was his name again?
Oh yeah, ‘Shaytan’.
They went on to cite attacks on Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine as their motive and saw it as a retaliation or revenge. (This isn’t breaking coverage – you can read it all on the wikipedia page).
For over 21 years, there has been almost daily repetition of the completely nonsensical phrase “islamic terrorism” as a result of this, 9/11 and a few other attacks that happened in the West.
How do we make sense of people committing the worst sins and crimes imaginable and claiming that it’s somehow ‘islamic’?
Some people became more and more Islamophobic and started imagining that the entire religion teaches mass-murder. They also refuse to listen to what any Muslim says to the contrary. In fact, the few times I’ve been on mainstream media to point out that it’s totally haram to kill people, they simply assumed I was lying and carried on believing that we’re all evil.
I think it was on Sky News when I called out the interviewer for calling it ‘islamic’ terrorism. I told him that if I claim to be a vegetarian, but I’m such an ‘extreme’ vegetarian that I’m going to eat 100 McDonalds Big Macs… does that really make me an extreme vegetarian?
What I’m doing directly contradicts what I’m claiming to be!
In the same way, by definition, terrorism can never be ‘islamic’.
(You can check out the interview from about a decade ago on the ‘media’ page on my website).
However, in a way, you can see where the Islamophobes are coming from.
I might ‘talk’ a good game, but the terrorist-y so-called ‘Muslims’ actually killed people including themselves. They clearly appear to have more conviction than me. Why would you believe me over them?
(Aside from the fact that I’m actually, objectively telling the truth and they’re actually, objectively wrong).
I’m reminded of what Sheikh Hamza Yusuf said immediately after 9/11:
“If there are any martyrs in this affair it would certainly be those brave firefighters and police that went in there to save human lives and in that process lost their own”.
The fact of the matter is, for the vast majority of us, there is no valid, physical, combative jihad to engage in right now (with a couple of obvious exceptions in parts of the world that are being invaded, who, as per international law, have the right to defend themselves).
If you kill random civilians, even if you think you’re doing jihad, you’re going to wake up to a nasty surprise on the Day of Judgement.
There is, however, a very valid type of jihad we all need to engage in and fight with all of our inner strength and resources.
That is: the fight against our own egos.
If you want some support and training to fight and win the Jihad against your own nafs, here’s something that might help:
