Okay, putting the name of Barbara Walters next to a special TV documentary about Heaven (ABC, 9 p.m. EST) is not something that would occur to most people. She’s not a religion scholar or even a religion correspondent. I had already checked “skip” on this one until I heard Barbara being interviewed on Sean Hannity’s radio show this afternoon. There was a guest host whose name I don’t recall. They played a long audio clip of Barbara’s interview of a failed Islamist suicide bomber. For those of us who’ve been studying Islamist suicide bombers, the revelations are not new. But for the general viewing audience they might be quite eye opening.

Terrorists have struck in Bali:

Jimbaran: A series of near-simultaneous bomb blasts ripped through popular tourist spots on the Indonesian island of Bali on Saturday killing at least 23 persons including several foreign tourists.

Two explosions struck seafood restaurants 100 metres apart in the beachside area of Jimbaran during the evening meal, police said.

Minutes later at least one blast hit a restaurant in Matahari Square in Kuta, a popular late-night shopping area, said witnesses.

A French diplomat who had visited two hospitals in Bali said at least 23 persons had been confirmed dead after the latest attacks, which came during the peak tourist season.

Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono strongly condemned the bombings in a televised address: “These are clearly terrorist attacks because the targets were random and public places.”

The attacks came just 11 days before the third anniversary of the bomb attacks on two nightclubs in Kuta which left 202 persons dead. The bombings were blamed on the Al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyah Islamic militant group.

More information is scarce as of now.

Update: Peaktalk discusses why Bali, again.

Amir Teheri, writing in Asharq Alawat, the world’s largest-circulation Arabic-language daily, says that in contradiction to the idea (a la Reuter’s) that “one man’s terrorist is another man freedom fighter,” in fact “One Man’s terrorist is Every Man’s Terrorist.”

[T]he United Nations’ legal committee, which has been wrangling with the question for decades, appears to have failed, once again, to offer an answer [of what terrorism is]. This, in turn, could mean that the forthcoming United Nations’ General Assembly will, once again, try to dodge the issue, despite the fact that half of the member states have suffered some form of terrorism in the past three decades. …

The committee’s failure is caused by the old cliché that “one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom-fighter” which would allow some to claim that terrorists should be divided into good ones and evil ones. The truth, however, is that all terrorism is evil and that one man’s terrorist should be regarded as every man’s terrorist.

Teheri blisters the practice of western media and governments of compartmentalizing terrorists into more or less acceptable depending on why they terrorizing. Read the whole thing. HT: Crossroads Arabia.

Comments on.

I cited today a piece in Arab News by Arab writer Dr. Mohammed T. Al-Rasheed calling for striking at the breeding grounds of terrorist “vermin.”

In the days since the bombings at Sharm el-Sheik many Egyptians are starting to ask just what exactly the breeding ground is and concluding that it just may be Islam itself. Reports the AP’s Nadia Abou El-magd, “Egyptians debating if their culture encourages terror.” (”Culture” however is being defined in almost exclusively religious terms.)

Stunned by terror attacks at a Red Sea resort, Egyptians are having a remarkably frank debate about whether mosques and schools — and the government itself — should be blamed for promoting Islamic extremism.

Even pro-government media say authorities have created a climate where young people are turning into radicals and suicide bombers.

In a country more used to hearing general condemnations of terrorism, critics on Wednesday were angry — and specific — hammering at instances where they say the government allowed mosque preachers or state media to promote intolerance.

At one mosque in Cairo, some worshippers objected to prayers for the dead and missing after Saturday’s bombings in Sharm el-Sheik because some victims likely were not Muslims, said the editor of the government weekly Al-Musawwar.

As a “professional religous person” I know that religion is not merely believing beliefs, it predominantly what one does because of those beliefs. What is happening in Egypt now, and less overtly among British Muslims earlier this month, is questioning whether Islam itself is leading directly to terrorism committed in its name.

I have in previous writings on One Hand Clapping distinguished between historic Islam and present-day Islamism and its direct offspring, jihadism (here’s my latest rendition). All spring from the same roots, but emphasize radically different beliefs and most importantly, what must be done because of those beliefs.

I observed back in August 2002 that “Islam is what Muslims do - Non-violent Muslims need to wake up; Islam’s soul is being murdered.”

There are definitely enough Jew- and Christian-hating Muslims in the world, especially including in America and Europe, to make me seriously ponder whether the hatred spewed forth by mullahs and Muslim editorialists is in fact the real McCoy of what Muhammed started.

This is exactly what prominent Egyptian voices are saying now. El-magd’s article continues,

“Islamic preaching institutions are in a very acute need for shake-up,” said Abdel Moeti Bayoumi, a theology professor at Al-Azhar University and a member of Al-Azhar’s Center of Islamic Research. Al-Azhar, in Cairo, is one of the leading Sunni Muslim institutions in the world.

Islamic leaders “need to do a lot of work to enlighten clerics and preachers and educate them about the true religious ideas … and teach them about the realities of the age we’re living in,” he said.

Back to my 2002 piece.

If what we are experiencing is not the real Islam, then the rest of the Muslims need to get the Islamic house in order. They need to understand that the present crisis is not just that of Islamists against the West, it is the Islamists against everybody who does not tow their line.

Several months later Professor Bala Ambati wrote,

When moderate Muslims state terrorist attacks are disconnected from Islam, they ignore the reality that Islamic fundamentalist imperialists act in the name of Islam and Muslims, claiming “true Islam’s” mantle from conspicuously absent moderates. . . . Until the realization that theocracies cannot be democracies dawns throughout the Islamic world, saying terrorism is disconnected from Islam is a smokescreen employed to abdicate responsibility to face reality.

We may be seeing mainstream Muslims awakening now.

Sheikh Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, a Lebanese authority in Shi’a Islam, published a fatwa or religious decree, saying: “We forbid barbaric acts against innocents who have nothing to do with the political demands of terrorists.”

“These are not martyr operations but barbaric suicide attacks and the culprits deserve only God’s punishment,” he said, urging the world’s Muslims to take a united stand against terrorism.

It must be noted that such responses have come in strength only since the al-Sheik bombings, when, as the United Arab Emirates’ Al-Ittihad newspaper noted, (same link),

More than half of the victims were Egyptians, with some Arabs and very few foreigners, so who was specifically targeted and what issues are they (the bombers) defending?

Why haven’t such questions been asked about the enormous number of bombings in Iraq by al Qaeda against Iraqi people? There’s no good answer, but we probably should be happy to take what we can get at this point. Let us unite in congratulating “a council of Muslim scholars in the United States [that] has issued a religious ruling, or fatwa, against terrorism and extremism.”

The Muslim scholars released the ruling during a press conference in Washington, saying that Islam condemns terrorism, religious radicalism and the use of violence.

The scholars serve on the Fiqh Council of North America, an association of Muslim jurists who interpret Islamic law.

The council’s chairman, Muzammil Siddiqi, read the fatwa, which says “targeting civilians’ life and property through suicide bombings or any other method of attack is forbidden, and those who commit these barbaric acts are criminals, not martyrs.”

“All acts of terrorism targeting the civilians are haram, forbidden in Islam. It is haram, forbidden, for a Muslim to cooperate or associate with any individual or group that is involved in any act of terrorism or violence,” he said.

The fatwa also says it is the “civic and religious duty of Muslims to cooperate with law enforcement authorities to protect the lives of civilians.”

The Islamic scholars say the fatwa was prompted by a similar ruling from the Muslim Council of Britain, following the July 7 terrorist attacks in London. …

The Muslim scholars have called for the fatwa to be read during Friday prayers at mosques across the United States.

This American fatwa is stouter than the British Muslims, though, because,

British Muslim leaders, for example, reserved the right to commit suicide bombings to fight an occupying power. That could be construed to give approval to suicide bombers in Iraq or Israel.

The American fatwa makes no such distinction.

There are other voices of prominent Muslims taking a stand. Turki Al-Faisal, newly-named Saudi Arabian ambassador to the United States, wrote that the terrorists,

… claim to be faithful to Islam and faithful to God but they are not. This is not Islam and these acts are absolutely not the will of God. Their twisted vision is alien to the healthy body of the faith that holds the world’s Muslim community together. …

Imams and teachers who have used Islam to bolster and preach their political beliefs have done so by perverting traditional Islamic texts. Declaring fatwas permitting suicide bombings goes against everything at the heart of Islam. These so-called Muslim scholars must be and are condemned. They are violating the most dearly held principles of Islam. …

What, then, must be done? The Islamic world needs to acknowledge the cancer within its own community and to root it out. Muslim scholars must come out loudly and strongly against suicide bombings regardless of where, when and why they have happened. We must undertake a global act of collective self-examination. In Islamic terms this is a project of muhasaba, a quest for the authentic Muslim voice that can dissolve the dark forces of destruction and point toward our true human values that cherish life and can bring about true human flourishing.

(This piece was co-authored with George Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury.)

I’ll leave the last words to Dr. Ambati, who minces none of them:

Moderate Muslims must choose whether to let megalomaniacs, liars, misogynists and murderers hijack societies and religion and pilot them into destruction’s abyss. Sidelines are not moral high ground. Unequivocally repudiating and forswearing terrorist methods and imperialist aims of Islamic fundamentalism by moderate Muslims is overdue. This requires calling the present jihad by mujahadeen and martyrs awaiting paradise its name, hirabah (unholy war) by mufsidoon (evildoers) bound for jahannam (hell).

Steps are being taken, baby steps for now, but steps nonetheless. We must be watchful and encourage them not to falter.

Comments on.

. . . ” And if you want to catch a terrorist you do not man tube stations. Once you are in the station trying to catch the perpetrator, you have already lost the game. The most effective way to combat vermin is to strike at their breeding grounds and not under your sink.”

So says Dr. Mohammed T. Al-Rasheed. Start here.

Bill Quick has a roundup.

Why would you love America?

Minh also explores the suicide bombings in London on7/7:

The fact is that the suicide provided no tactical advantage. They have may have been done for propaganda purpose. It was done to inspire Islamists worldwide – to show that even Muslims who live and born in the decadent west can sacrifice their lives. That the infidels were so evils that even Muslim in the West rose against them.

But that’s not all. Jihadists and Islamists generally are intently focused on the afterlife. As I explained, using Muslim sources, in my essay, “A Short History of Jihad,”

Hence, for Muslims to wield weapons in a war in which Islam itself is defended is literally an act of worship. The Muslim jihadi has the right to expect reward proportionate to his sacrificial worship. In military jihad, the ultimate sacrifice is to die, which deserves the ultimate reward, immediate entry by the slain jihadi’s soul into Paradise. This belief springs from the words of Mohammed himself, who during the battle of Badr told his soldiers,

“I swear by the One in whose hand Muhammad’s soul is, any man who fights them today and is killed while he is patient in the ordeal and seeks the pleasure of Allah, going forward and not backing off, Allah will enter him into Paradise.”

One of the perversions of modern jihadism is that it has theologically equated suicide-murders of unarmed men, women and children as the functional and religious equivalent of dying in battle against an infidel army.