Santanu,
Your observations are correct. I don't think suicide bombing is monopolized by one religious group though it has been used more frequently by one group. It looks like use or non-use of violence is determined more by culture than by any religious belief or teaching. I don't think Koran says that by committing suicide one can go to heaven (what is that?).
Dilip
"Roy, Santanu" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
"Roy, Santanu" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Exactly what do you mean by a Hindu suicide bomber? Wasn't Rajiv Gandhi assasinated by a "Hindu" who was also a suicide bomber? Suidicide bombing is quite well and alive among the LTTE, almost all of whom are "Hindus". Self immolation for political causes is rampant in south India.No society believes in suicide. And every society I know of believes in martyrdom - in some form or the other.Santanu.-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]On Behalf Of Rajen Barua
Sent: Wednesday, May 18, 2005 9:06 AM
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; Dilip/Dil Deka; ASSAMNETCOLORADO
Subject: Re: [Assam] It takes a village?After all is said and done, there is another side of the equation. One will have to answer why there is no Hindu suicide bomber or an Assamese suicide bomber. And you don't have to struggle for the answer.
- It is because the Hindu society or Assamese society donot believe in suicide. Islam does. In Islam, one can go to haven by committying suicide for the country.
Rajen Barua----- Original Message -----From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>To: "Dilip/Dil Deka" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "ASSAMNETCOLORADO" <assam@pikespeak.uccs.edu>Sent: Wednesday, May 18, 2005 9:33 AMSubject: Re: [Assam] It takes a village?> >If you want to stop a wave of suicide bombings, the likes of which we are
> >seeing in Iraq, it takes a village. I am a big believer that the greatest
> >restraint on human behavior is not laws and police, but culture and
> >religious authority.
>
>
> *** That is a very interesting belief. It is a convenient one, now that suicide-
> bombings have become the norm in Iraq where none existed and after
> thousands of innocents have been slaughtered by US bombs for which no
> village nor religious outrage was anywhere to be seen or heard, and
> particularly since Iraqis had nothing to do with 9/11. I don't recall Friedman's
> outrage at the killing of Iraqi innocents by US bombing. Where was his faith?
> Where was his village of the righteous?
>
> The politics of religion is no different! from any other poiltics. Suicide
> bombing is an act of desperation against an overwhelming enemy. It is
> assymetrical warfare at its most assymetrical.
>
> The expressions of outrage like Friedman's or those of others who find
> common cause with it is selective ast best, and thus will go nowhere, as
> history amply illustrates.
>
>
>
>
>
> >
> > From: Dilip/Dil Deka <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > Date: 2005/05/18 Wed AM 09:42:39 EDT
> > To: ASSAMNETCOLORADO <assam@pikespeak.uccs.edu>
> > Subject: [Assam] It takes a village?
> >
> > >From the article below, I quote, "In identifying the problem, though, Mr.
> Na'! mat also identifies the solution. If you want to stop a wave of suicide
> bombings, the likes of which we are seeing in Iraq, it takes a village. I am a
> big believer that the greatest restraint on human behavior is not laws and
> police, but culture and religious authority. It is what the community, what the
> village, deems shameful. That is what restrains people. So how do we get the
> Sunni Arab village to delegitimize suicide bombers?"
> >
> > Laws and police, or shame on the perpetrators by means of culture? Which
> one do you think works better? Does religion (as Friedman says) have any role
> in bringing about restraint?
> > Dilip
> > Outrage and SilenceBy THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
> > Published: May 18, 2005
> >
> > It is hard not to notice two contrasting stories that have run side by side
> during the past week. One is the story about the violent prot! ests in the
> Muslim world triggered by a report in Newsweek (which the magazine has
> now retracted) that U.S. interrogators at Guant?namo Bay desecrated a Koran
> by throwing it into a toilet. In Afghanistan alone, at least 16 people were
> killed and more than 100 wounded in anti-American rioting that has been
> linked to that report. I certainly hope that Newsweek story is incorrect,
> because it would be outrageous if U.S. interrogators behaved that way.
> > That said, though, in the same newspapers one can read the latest reports
> from Iraq, where Baathist and jihadist suicide bombers have killed 400 Iraqi
> Muslims in the past month - most of them Shiite and Kurdish civilians
> shopping in markets, walking in funerals, going to mosques or volunteering
> to join the police.
> >
> >
> >
> > Yet these mass murders - this desecration and dismemberment of r! eal
> Muslims by other Muslims - have not prompted a single protest march
> anywhere in the Muslim world. And I have not read of a single fatwa issued by
> any Muslim cleric outside Iraq condemning these indiscriminate mass
> murders of Iraqi Shiites and Kurds by these jihadist suicide bombers, many of
> whom, according to a Washington Post report, are coming from Saudi Arabia.
> >
> > The Muslim world's silence about the real desecration of Iraqis, coupled
> with its outrage over the alleged desecration of a Koran, highlights what we
> are up against in trying to stabilize Iraq - as well as the only workable
> strategy going forward.
> >
> > The challenge we face in Iraq is so steep precisely because the power shift
> the U.S. and its allies are trying to engineer there is so profound - in both
> religious and political terms.
> >
> > Religiously, if! you want to know how the Sunni Arab world views a Shiite's
> being elected leader of Iraq, for the first time ever, think about how whites in
> Alabama would have felt about a black governor's being installed there in
> 1920. Some Sunnis do not think Shiites are authentic Muslims, and are
> indifferent to their brutalization.
> >
> > At the same time, politically speaking, some Arab regimes prefer to see the
> pot boiling in Iraq so the democratization process can never spread to their
> countries. That's why their official newspapers rarely describe the murders of
> civilians in Iraq as a massacre or acts of terror. Such crimes are usually
> sanitized as "resistance" to occupation.
> >
> > Salama Na'mat, the Washington bureau chief for the London-based Arabic
> daily Al Hayat, wrote the other day: "What is the responsibility of the [Arab]
> regimes and the official and semiof! ficial media in the countries bordering Iraq
> in legitimizing the operations that murder Iraqis? ... Isn't their goal to thwart
> [the emergence of] the newborn democracy in Iraq so that it won't spread in
> the region?" (Translation by Memri.)
> >
> > In identifying the problem, though, Mr. Na'mat also identifies the solution.
> If you want to stop a wave of suicide bombings, the likes of which we are
> seeing in Iraq, it takes a village. I am a big believer that the greatest restraint
> on human behavior is not laws and police, but culture and religious authority.
> It is what the community, what the village, deems shameful. That is what
> restrains people. So how do we get the Sunni Arab village to delegitimize
> suicide bombers?
> >
> > Inside Iraq, obviously, credible Sunnis have to be brought into the political
> process and constitution-drafting, as long as they do! not have blood on their
> hands from Saddam's days. And outside Iraq, the Bush team needs to be
> forcefully demanding that Saudi Arabia and other key Arab allies use their
> media, government and religious systems to denounce and delegitimize the
> despicable murder of Muslims by Muslims in Iraq.
> >
> > If the Arab world, its media and its spiritual leaders, came out and
> forcefully and repeatedly condemned those who mount these suicide attacks,
> and if credible Sunnis were given their fair share in the Iraqi government, I am
> certain a lot of this suicide bombing would stop, as happened with the
> Palestinians. Iraqi Sunnis would pass on the intelligence needed to prevent
> these attacks, and they would deny the suicide bombers the safe houses they
> need to succeed.
> >
> > That is the only way it stops, because we don't know who is who. It takes
> the village -! and right now the Sunni Arab village needs to be pressured and
> induced to restrain those among them who are engaging in these suicidal
> murders of innocents.
> >
> > The best way to honor the Koran is to live by the values of mercy and
> compassion that it propagates.
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
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