Jihadi Etiquette

You couldn't hope for a clearer example of what Steven Weinberg had in mind - "Good people will do good things, and bad people will do bad things. But for good people to do bad things -- that takes religion" - than the rules of jihadi etiquette as outlined in this NYT article (via AL Daily):

“No jihadi will do any action until he is certain this action is morally acceptable,” says Dr. Mohammad al-Massari, a Saudi dissident who runs a leading jihad Internet forum, Tajdeed.net, in London, where he now lives.

Killing bystanders is not a problem, and is, according to Dr Massari and other Islamic thinkers, morally acceptable:

In the typical car bombing, some Islamists say, God will identify those who deserve to die — for example, anyone helping the enemy — and send them to hell. The other victims will go to paradise. “The innocent who is hurt, he won’t suffer,” Dr. Massari says. “He becomes a martyr himself.”

The same applies to killing children:

[M]ilitant Islamists including extremists in Jordan who embrace Al Qaeda’s ideology teach recruits that children receive special consideration in death. They are not held accountable for any sins until puberty, and if they are killed in a jihad operation they will go straight to heaven. There, they will instantly age to their late 20s, and enjoy the same access to virgins and other benefits as martyrs receive.

It's a little coy, mind, to refer to Mohammad al-Massari simply as a Saudi dissident. From a couple of years back:

A London-based supporter of Osama bin Laden who runs a website depicting beheadings and suicide bombings in Iraq has forfeited his right to asylum in the country and should be deported, MPs said last night.

Mohammed al-Massari was shown on a BBC documentary earlier this week defending the jihadist messages placed on the Tajdeed site that he runs.

It includes a film of a suicide bomber killing three British soldiers in Iraq, the murder of American civilian contractors and a self-help guide for would-be terrorists.

And this, Rule No. 4: You cannot kill in the country where you reside unless you were born there, is distinctly odd:

Militants living in a country that respects the rights of Muslims have something like a peace contract with the country, says Omar Bakri, a radical sheik who moved from London to Lebanon two years ago under pressure from British authorities.

Again, under pressure from British authorities is a little coy, but let that pass.

“When I heard about the London bombings, I prayed that no bombers from Britain were involved,” he said, fearing immigrants were responsible. As it turned out, the July 7, 2005, attack largely complied with this rule. Three of the four men who set off the bombs had been born in Britain; the fourth moved there from Jamaica as an infant.

That makes no sense, unless he's been misquoted and really said, "I prayed that no bombers from outside Britain were involved". Which seems unlikely, to be honest, though who knows. Still, it does rather detract from one's confidence in the authority of the article.

Mr. Bakri says he does not condone violence against innocent people anywhere. But some of the several hundred young men who studied Islam with him say they have no such qualms.

“We have a voting system here in Britain, so anyone who is voting for Tony Blair is not a civilian and therefore would be a legitimate target,” says Khalid Kelly, an Irish-born Islamic convert who says he studied with Mr. Bakri in London.

Khalid Kelly? Do they just make these names up? He'll no doubt be in the same group as Mohammed O'Flaherty and Tanweer Fitzpatrick.

To further the impression that the authors are really trying to play down the sheer breath-taking outrageousness of the justifications for mass-murder that they've been presented with, they even throw in some moral equivalence:

Islamic militants are hardly alone in seeking to rationalize innocent deaths, says John O. Voll, a professor of Islamic history at Georgetown University. “Whether you are talking about leftist radicals here in the 1960s, or the apologies for civilian collateral damage in Iraq that you get from the Pentagon, the argument is that if the action is just, the collateral damage is justifiable,” he says.

As though they're unable to discern any difference between a morally responsible military or security action aimed as far as possible at minimising any civilian collateral damage, and those jihadi actions where inflicting the maximum civilian collateral damage possible is irrelevant if not positively desirable.

Comments

[Noga]

Quoted in Martin Amis' "The Age of Horrorism":

"'Islamism is not merely the latest flavour of totalitarian nihilism. There is a difference between nihilism and a desire for supernatural reward. Islamists could smash the world to atoms and still not be guilty of nihilism, because everything in their world has been transfigured by the light of paradise...' Pathological mass movements are sustained by 'dreams of omnipotence and sadism', in Robert Jay Lifton's phrase. That is usually enough. Islamism adds a third inducement to its warriors: a heavenly immortality that begins even before the moment of death."

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1868746,00.html

[clazy]

I've given up assuming journalists like this one are too incompetent to do a little digging into the background of their sources, and I now take it for granted that they are simply dishonest. "Coy" is really too kind.