London Bombing Analyst Finds Muslim Leaders' Silence Disturbing
by Chad Groening
July 18, 2005
(AgapePress) - A Middle East expert and Christian speaker says if so-called moderate Muslim leaders fail to speak out against terrorism, they are in effect endorsing it.Tony Nassif is founder and president of Cedars Cultural and Educational Foundation. The son of a Lebanese father says the recent London terrorist attacks illustrate the great threat that Islamofascism poses to the Western world. He is concerned that not many Muslim leaders seem to be condemning the terrorist attacks.
When Muslim leaders fail to vocalize their condemnation of terrorist violence, Nassif insists, then by implication they are expressing approval. Meanwhile, he contends, the wanton violence perpetrated by Muslim terrorists begs the question about the moral authority they claim under a rubric of devout faith, with its necessity of waging "holy war" against the "Great Satan" -- the Western infidels.
"The extremists openly, knowingly, and expressly endorse the murder of women and children as a bona fide method of spreading jihad," Nassif says. "My logical question is who, then, is the Great Satan?"
A few voices from within the U.K.'s Islamic community have been raised in denunciation of terrorism. The Associated Press reports that 10 days after Islamic radicals carried out the deadly attacks on the London transport system, Great Britain's largest Sunni Muslim group has issued a binding religious edict condemning the suicide bombings as the work of a "perverted ideology."
That body, the Sunni Council, has decried the July 7 bombings as anti-Islamic and is pointing out that the Quran forbids suicide attacks. The Council's chairman recently declared, "Anyone who commits suicide will be sent to Hell." He added, "What happened in London can be seen as a sacrilege. It is a sin to take your life or the life of others."
Nevertheless, Nassif says the majority of Islam's leaders are remaining silent about the attacks. "Here's what really concerns me," he says. "According to [Islamic] scriptures, in fact, silence actually endorses the act. So when Muslim leaders are quiet in the face of such horrendous terrorism and violence, there is an implied if not expressed endorsement of the act of violence."
Scholar: Home Grown Terrorism's Seeds Bear Similarity to U.S. Situation
A British-born Southern Baptist seminary professor has offered an analysis of the conditions that led to the London terrorist bombings. Dr. Michael McMullen, an associate professor of church history at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City, Missouri, says his native country's Islamic problem can be traced back to the 1960s when the government began allowing mass immigration from other countries in order to ensure cheap labor.
McMullen says thousands of Muslims, mostly from Pakistan, were allowed to come and take jobs that British citizens were unwilling to do. However, he says these new immigrants had little if any desire to identify with and become part of British culture. Instead, he notes, they have isolated themselves to a degree, even as they quietly "have taken over town councils, local authorities, and schools."
Such immigrants typically "find it very difficult in Britain to amalgamate with culture," McMullen says, "so they keep very much to themselves." Hence, he explains, "You have now British citizens who are of Pakistani descent, which they've identified as being the bombers."
The MBTS professor notes that his homeland's policy of "pretty vast immigration into Britain" during the 1960s and 1970s resulted in a large foreign-born or foreign-descended population of individuals who became citizens without becoming assimilated. It is "a similar situation, I suppose, to what occurs here in the States with people from Mexico -- you have a ready kind of labor source. But with that, they've brought certain ideas which ferment and create problems," he says.
McMullen says after the London subway attacks, his relatives and others back in England were not surprised to learn that homegrown terrorists had committed the deed. "I have heard from people in Britain that the police were already aware there was recruiting going on at Leeds University and other universities, trying to recruit al Qaeda members," he says.
Chad Groening, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
