Shot by al-Qaeda
The Times of London carries an excerpt from a most dramatic account by BBC correspondent Frank Gardner of his shooting by al-Qaeda thugs in Saudi Arabia.
“No! Don’t do this!†I shouted instinctively in Arabic.He pulled out a long-barrelled pistol. Oh my God, I thought, this cannot be happening.
I ran for my life, sprinting away from our van and into the deeply conservative quarter of Al-Suwaidi. There was a loud crack behind me and I felt something sting my shoulder. I didn’t know it then but the bullet passed clean through, hitting the shoulder bone on the way….
Instead of the neatly arranged headdresses with a sharp crease in the middle worn by ordinary urban Saudis, these men wore theirs wound tightly round their foreheads like a bandage. It was the isaaba, the dress worn by jihadi fighters who consider they are about to go into battle, the same style worn by the 9/11 suicidal hijackers in their video testimonies and by Mohammed Siddique Khan, the leader of the July 7 London bombers, in his posthumously released video warning to the West.
I realised then that I was doomed. These men were no casual, have-a-go amateurs; they were the real thing, a hardcore Al-Qaeda terror cell bent on attacking their government, killing westerners and “cleansing the Arabian peninsula of infidelsâ€.
In that instant I glimpsed faces driven by pure hatred and fanaticism. I pleaded with them in Arabic, as so many hostages have done in Iraq, while they held a brief discussion as to what to do with me. It did not take long. They responded to my pleas by opening fire once more….
For the past few years I had tried hard to explain the complexities of the Middle East and the thinking behind the Al-Qaeda phenomenon to western and international audiences. And this was my reward? A bunch of bullets in the guts from men who had convinced themselves they were killing in the cause of Islam. It just did not seem right….
Tags: Mideast
April 30th, 2006 at 1:29 pm
Well, it never seems right when you discover that, in the end, they don’t want your explanation. They already have their explanation. What they want is your death. Of course, it’s a little hard to explain that to a corpse.
April 30th, 2006 at 11:16 pm
Liberals don’t understand that there are no complexities in the Wahhabist/Sufi Islamofascist movement. They want to kill all infidels and enlarge the Islamic world by death and force. Trying to understand them will just you killed. There is a solution - Lead injections, courtesy of the US Marines. Works everytime and is very necessary now.
May 1st, 2006 at 10:49 am
When your instincts say the other guy’s nuts, trust your instincts. When dealing with the homicidal you need to be ready to kill, and kill at a moment’s notice. You’re not ready to kill you might as well just stand there and prepare to die.
Sweetness and light aint worth crap when you live in a world where child abusers and serial killers stalk the land. Murderous fanatics too.
May 1st, 2006 at 11:20 am
(paraphrase)
Conservatives don’t understand that there are no complexities in the Bushist/Neocon Christianofascist movement. They want to kill all muslims and enlarge the Christian world by death and force. Trying to understand them will just you wiretapped and killed. There is a solution - shrapnel injections, courtesy of the jihadists. Works everytime…
(/paraphrase)
Just a thought.
Remember, a whopping 1/3 of Americans, or as we know it, the least common denominator, still think the war is a good thing, and not just a political creation of Preznit Numbnuts. And of course, we’ll have war with Iran too, just in time for November…
You have to understand though, that people on BOTH sides always think they’re right. Sure, I’m on the side of America, when push comes to shove. Not my government as it stands, obviously, but my country, and my military.
But I am also capable of understanding that the people who are on the other side are quite convinced that their actions are right. They are defending themselves from the invasion and occupation of a foreign power. Would you not do the same for America?
May 1st, 2006 at 11:41 am
Angelos has told us some of the similarities. Perhaps he can also tell us some of the relevant differences.
May 1st, 2006 at 12:55 pm
Islam is an idealogy wrapped in the cloak of religion. It is not however a religion, no matter how many lunatics follow it. The BBC reporter seemed like he was trying to be open and understanding. Fortunately for him he survived his encounter and hopefully it was a wake up call. Islam is pure unbridled hatred. It is not nor has ever been a religion of peace. Islam does not mean peace, it means submission. You are dealing with a cult trapped by the Koran in a barbaric mindset fostered by a thief, liar, and a pedophile. Some call this immoral piece of shit a “prophet” and actually look up to him.
As for Angelos, your apologist comments are quite sick. Islam is one issue not up for political debate and grandstanding. It is a sickness of the mind that brings a man to blow himself up and the sooner it is eradicated the safer all humanity (christian, buddhist, atheist, hindu, confucianism, muslim apostate, etc…) can get on with bettering the world we live in.
Islam is todays Nazism, but 10 times worse because it is blessed by allah and his morally depraved prophet.
May 1st, 2006 at 8:07 pm
Islam is an idealogy wrapped in the cloak of religion.
Sorry kat, nice try. ALL religions are ideologies. Your christianism is no different. Religion is not reality - it is fairy tales. You believe yours, they believe theirs.
The false prophet on this side of the Atlantic is killing in the name of God too. Democracy certainly can’t be the goal. Witness its slow destruction right here at home.
Religion (any flavor) = Murder
I am not apologizing for anyone kat. Just saying the people over there are no worse than the people anywhere else, including here.
Or, to put it in your biblical terms, they’re just getting an eye for an eye. Or doing as they were done unto. If you want to justify our bombing and torture because of Dear Leader, then you must understand their idea of revenge.
May 2nd, 2006 at 5:02 pm
Sorry Angelos,
But you are speaking to an atheist. Do you honestly believe that blowing up Sbarros pizza, or throwing a handicapped man into the ocean, or taking a school hostage is really revenge? Funny that you bring up Hammurabi’s code. Muslims, like the Code, are living in the past. A barbaric past that one could say all religions except for Islam have shed. Christianity did advance by the sword as did many religions, but one cannot argue, “well this religion did things like that so islam is okay to do this.” That is a logical fallacy. Since the birth of islam by their mentally insane prophet, muslims have been nothing but a cancerous plague on the societies they have come in touch with. Eqypt’s culture destroyed, Iran’s culture destroyed. Everywhere muslims touch turns to cesspool of destruction. Look at what is happening in Thailand, Malayasia, France. These cockroaches move into an area, and once they build up their numbers they then demand special treatment. Yes, muslims the most intolerant fuckers on the planet, want you to be tolerant of their intolerance.
They want what? Revenge? Maybe you need a history lesson. It is muslims who for the past 1400 years have spewed forth like a festering cancer to spread their disease. Mohammad’s action alone condemn the religion to the lunatic fringe that it is. He beheaded his enemies, murdered a poet who chose to criticize him, murdered entire towns of jews who viewed him as a false prophet. Now his Mohammad wanna-be’s spread their virus to Malaysia, Phillipines, France and any other country stupid enough to let them in. It is muslims who end their prayers with death to israel. Do Christians do this? How about Hindu? Hate to tell you this but Jews were in Mecca long before Mohammad was screwing around with 9 year old brides.
Religion, I agree is a sickness, however Christianity moved on from it’s barbaric past and came out with a message of love. The golden rule. At least you can say, “oh these people are not christian! Look how they violate the teachings of Jesus!”. As a muslim to examine their religion. They will find it perfect and without fault. In Islam it’s simple, every whackjob blowing themselves up or beheading innocent victims of their terror is merely emulating their piece of shit prophet. Where has Islam come out with a message of peace? Where is the benefit to society of Islam? Christianity is as false as Islam, but you don’t see christians screaming “GOD IS GREAT!”, as they steer airplances into buildings and blow up buses. Revenge? Revenge for what? Tell that to the children aboard those flights.
Hammarubi code: Sorry honey, but you had to die. It’s all fair in love and war.
Child: But what have I done? why do they hate me?
Reason: They hate you because they have no future. Islam provides no answers to the muslim mind. It only breeds mindless zombies. Revenge and hate are two different beasts. Islam is pure unbridled hate.
The civilized world has been putting up with the bullshit of Islam for far too long already. How many innocent people must die to satisfy this cancer.
Muslims will try hard to lie and pretend to be peaceful, but they cannot resist their fanaticism. The majority of them do not immigrate to enjoy a better life and share the values of their new country. The cartoons were a great wake up call to the world. Sadly the US did not have the courage to print them. Political correctness? What a joke. I’m sorry but I am not about to be tolerant with a group of intolerant hate mongers preaching the insanity of 7th century.
It will be interesting to read the full report of this BBC reporter. I would like to know what his opinion is now.
June 28th, 2006 at 11:45 pm
Sorry to everyone here, but there’s one problem with all this.
The men that shot Frank Gardner, those guys that are sharing equal first place with Kai with the most racism and hatred, aren’t Muslims.
Almost the whole of the Islamic world agrees that Al-Qaeda is not Muslim. They’re a political group, using twisted ideology to trick angry down-and-outers into fighting for what they think is the right cause.
People keep repeating that the Qur’an says “Kill all infidels”. Well, considering I’ve read it a couple of times, I can quite honestly tell you it doesn’t. In fact, mostly all the Qur’an talks about is telling Muslims not to kill people. And then there’s the section that specifies that Jews and Christians are NOT, under any circumstances, “infidels”. (And also, the Qur’an actually bans twisting ideology to advocate killing people, which is what al-Qaeda’s doing - so technically, they’re infidels.)
Oh yeah, by the way, a lot of the other stuff, like saying that suicide bombers go to heaven and meet 7 virgins, is crap too. The Islamic principle (Islam means “Following in the Faith of Allah”; for those that thought it meant “submission”, it doesn’t) is that life is the gift from God, so the two very worst things you could do, as a Muslim, is kill innocent people or kill yourself (damage to other people’s property is another bad one). There’s nothing in true Islam or the Qur’an that supports suicide bombings.
And then there’s also the Islamic world’s reaction to this handful of rogue psychopaths that call themselves al-Qaeda. Saudi Arabia (Osama bin Laden’s home country), Morocco, Indonesia, Jordan, Libya, Pakistan, Israel, the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Comoros, Qatar, Kuwait, Tunisia, and most of the rest of the Middle East all condemn al-Qaeda and actively fight against it. The new government in Afghanistan doesn’t support al-Qaeda, and Iraq never did. No-one’s quite sure whether Somalia or Sudan support al-Qaeda, but, really, they’re both probably too busy starving to death to do anything about al-Qaeda anyway.
Muslim groups en masse condemn the things that al-Qaeda do. Every suicide bomber or terrorist murderer gets struck from any sort of tie to Islam. It doesn’t matter that they think they’re doing it for Allah. I could think that I was President of the World, it doesn’t make it a fact. Charles Manson though that he was working for God when he killed all those people in the US, but he was using ideology twisted his own way to suit his own wishes. And religion’s against that.
For every crazy Muslim-based murderer, there’s a couple of million Muslims that aren’t.
September 19th, 2006 at 3:23 pm
Almost all Al-Qaida members are Muslims who interpret the Koran literally. Islam is a political movement AND an ideology. Judaism is a religion and most definitely NOT an ideology. ALL of the precepts for behavior, for establishing courts of law, for dealing with conflict are God-given and not man-made creations. There were no nationalistic motives for the creation of an independent State of Israel: it was the fulfilment of a religious promise.
Sorry Abdullah, but Islam cannot be called a “religion of peace” by its universal hatred and mistreatment of Jews. There is no such thing a religious tolerance in Islam with regard to Jews. THAT is true Islam. You can quote all you want from the front of the Qu’ran, but what’s in the back is what matterrs.
The Qu’ran cannot be chosen piecemeal since it is considered to be “perfect.”