The Mumbai Atrocities

Herbert Thornton

Widespread piracy in the Indian Ocean, & now these outrages in Mumbai demonstrate clearly that extremist Islam is growing more brazenly aggressive than ever.

Not just President-elect Obama, but Vladimir Putin, George Brown, and other world leaders may soon be faced with even worse - and bolder - manifestations of this sort of aggression.

Surely these situations require that the west seek a rapprochement with Russia and that they, India, and it is to be hoped, China, will co-ordinate comprehensive and effective policies to extinguish the malignancy of extremist Islam?

Verity

OMG - I hadn't even read or heard about this! I haven't even finished reading your post before expressing my horror. I've stayed at the Taj many times and love Bombay (as Indians other than government twits and lefty Westerners still refer to this wonderful city) and I'm just shocked!

Verity

Now I've read the full, and excellent, account in The Telegraph, and although they were herding British and Americans about, this was an attack on India, not us.

India's success is threatening to islam, which is why there have been attacks in markets and trains over the past few months. They want to frighten Westerners away from spending their money in India. More, they fear the Anglosphere, of which India, and the Indian military, are such an essential part.

Be clear. This was not an attack on Britain or America, but on the rising economic power and influence of India.

Anne de Brux

This is all so puzzling... terrorists are targetting US and UK nationals in India? But why in India?

What's going on?

Herbert Thornton

Considering the frequency with which extremist Islamic attacks are now occurring, and the magnitude of them, it is clear that are, in fact if not in law, Acts of War. Surely it is time to modify International Law in the matter so that they are treated as Acts of War?

I think that when a country turns a blind eye to people on its territory who organise terrorism to be carried out elsewhere, then their turning a blind eye should in itself be treated as an Act of War.

Maskelayne

Our global prime minister was quick to respond:

"These outrageous attacks in Mumbai will be met with a vigorous response."

Quite Shakespearean...

''What they are, yet I know not,
but they shall be the terrors of the earth."

Kev G

Mr Thornton - Wasn't this idea already floated in 2001 and rejected on the grounds that the US and UK would have to look no further for a belligerent than the mirror?

Tory Lion

Verity, I'm afraid I would have to disagree with you.

The whole basis of Islamism is that they do not acknowledge country boundaries, therefore I believe this not be an attack on India, or the UK, or the US - it's an attack on Capitalism and Democracy and the principles that they uphold.

Nicholas

Maskelayne. The "vigorous response" will no doubt involve more plundering forays into our traditional freedoms and laws by our delightful Home Secretary.

Mike, Brighton

I travel to India frequently primarily to Bangalore and less frequently to Bombay.
Bombay is the flashpoint as it is huge with a large Hindu population and a smaller but still large Muslim community.
Assuming the terrorists are Islamic they can hide and gain support within elements of this Muslim community.
One of the key reasons for this atrocity is to cause inter-ethnic conflict between the Hindus and Muslims. Sadly something that would not be hard to achieve, especially if the Hindu-nationalists get involved especially the quasi-racist BJP. Watch for a detailed breakdown of the dead and injured from the India media in the next few days. They will point to almost wholly Hindu victims. Something sadly the BJP will use in their rhetoric. There are also some elections happening in India over the next few days.

mac

Just wait - our esteemed Home Secretary will soon pronounce: "this is further evidence of the vital need to introduce ID cards to fight terrorism."

ID cards are about as useful in this context as having them to hand when there's rain or flooding, but that won't change Labour's controlling urge to introduce them.

Verity

The Tories need a new leader stat. David Cameron is not up to dealing with the aggression of this religion. He thinks life if the playing fields of Eton and thinks the whole world believes in "fair play, old chap". We need someone much tougher than Cameron. David Davis springs to mind. I don't see him sitting around yacking and drinking mint tea.

America is screwed for the next four year. And even if something happened to Obama the world would be faced with that hymn to Botox, capped teeth and hair implants, Joe Biden.

Herbert Thornton

Kev G -

Your point is frighteningly valid.

Moreover, the mainstream political parties are pig-headedly against doing anything effective about it - and that is even more frightening.

The Dandiprat

"Watch for a detailed breakdown of the dead and injured from the India media in the next few days."

As in, doing their job Mike?

Charles Griffith

....Now, where is the Muslim outrage at this latest atrocity in particular, and all previous terrorist acts generally? There's a remarkable and notable passivity among the Muslims to all this terrorism.

Herbert Thornton

The last time India and Pakistan had a serious confrontation, there was a good deal of apprehension that it could result in nuclear war between the two.

The impulse for a war is clearly concentrated in Pakistan - and this time the danger of it has become even more acute. Muslims, I am surprised to discover, are now estimated to comprise something like 20% of India's population. Obviously, any war with Pakistan will be accompanied by a huge Muslim insurrection in India.

Imagine, if you can, the nature of such a war - and the nature of the aftermath.

Verity

Charles Griffith makes a telling point.

Verity

So it wasn't an "India Pakistan" conflict. It was "India British" as seven of the terrorist were from the Leeds Bradfor area.

Blair and his minions and Brown and his minions, in many instances the same minions, especially one Peter Mandelson, are responsible for many of these tragic, tragic deaths and maimings and terror in our good friend and ally, India.

I thought Tony Blair was supposed to have a dicky ticker and I keep waiting for good news ... I've got Champagne on ice all ready to go.

Herbert Thornton

If this style of surreptitious attack by well organised militants has ever before been carried out in a great city, I am not aware of it.

Assuming that this is a first, it makes me ask - is it not merely that, but also what might be called en experiment, or practice run, in order to assess its impact and the practicability of repeating it in other infidel cities?

My answer to that question, I'm afraid, has to be - "Yes" - it is a test run.

From that we can only conclude that from now on similar attacks are going to be repeated.

Whether the civilised world has the stomach to do whatever may prove necessary to put an end to them is less clear.

Herbert Thornton

Verity -

Until I read your posting I had assumed that all the terrorists were either Arabs or Pakistanis who had been trained in Pakistan and by Pakistanis and I was going to raise the question of India's reaction to that.

To think that at 7 of these maniacs were from Leeds/Bradford gives the situation a whole new dimension, especially when I read accounts of illegal immigrants being employed as cleaners etc. even in the House of Commons.

And the Police arrest Damian Green?

Herbert Thornton

Tory Lion,

I agree with you, and so does Mark Steyn -

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OGY1OTBmMTNmYWYyYTRlZWU2Nzc2YzBlNDlhMzhiY2Q=

Augustus

The Mumbai atrocities are most certainly an attack on the West. Americans, British, and Jews were the main targets, sumbols of 'Western decadence' which the luxury Taj Mahal hotel represents. And, perhaps coincidentally, during Thanksgiving week.

India, with over a billion inhabitants, of which 130 million of them are Muslims, is used to terrorist attacks, albeit that this type of attack is unprecedented. It appears to signal to Westerners and Jews that wherever they may be they are not safe. The shooting parties and hostage taking remind one of other incidents such as those on Bali and in Mombasa in 2002.

In Afghanistan, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, to name a few other countries, extremist Muslims target Westerners. This attack fits in with a global pattern, and should be a wake-up call to the West. India is a nuclear power, is the largest democratic country on earth, has an extremely fast growing economy, and is playing an ever-increasing role on the world stage. Strategically it is of paramount importance that the region is safe and stable, and that conflicts are not re-opened between India and Pakistan as a consequence of this attack. If Pakistan decides to start a military conflict with India that could destabilize all the West's efforts in the region to date. Americans, and if necessary Europeans, must now make every effort to avoid such a scenario at all costs.

Verity

Augustus - "Western decadence", as in luxury, is pauperish compared to Arab decadence. An ex-boss used to do business at a high level in Saudi Arabia, and was entertained in their homes by sheiks and princes and the level of decadence and self-indulgence was mind-boggling. Everyone who has been to Saudi Arabia has come back mentioning the abandoned perfectly good Cadillacs and other luxury cars on the highway. When a car develops a minor problem - and sometimes just when it runs out of gas - they abandon it and go and buy another one. The grudge that the Islamic terrorist fantasising morons have against us is, we aren't subjects of Dar-es-Salaam - the land of Islam.

They've been at it for 1,500 years. Fortunately for us, the Crusaders weren't so passive as the governments of the lefty West, which seeks to "understand" them. I can explain what there is to understand in two words: World domination.

Herbert Thornton

Augustus,

I agree with most of your posting, but I feel very uneasy with the implications of your final sentence, where you begin - "If Pakistan decides to start a military conflict with India....."

It seems to me that much as many Muslim hotheads may want it, such a step from Pakistan is very unlikely - because cool calculation makes Pakistan realise that in a nuclear war, Pakistan would probably cease to exist. At the same time it is equally clear that at present India does not want such a war, nor - assuming your view represents the general view - does the rest of the non-Muslim world - at present.

But I invite people to consider what flows from this extreme mutual reluctance to actually go to war. I think that it leaves Pakistan free to pursue courses of action to undermine and destabilise India that - in the time before nuclear weapons existed - would have most certainly led to war. And that is exactly what we have seen happening many times. Now, in Mumbai, we have seen it happen yet again.

I think that we should all now ask ourselves a bigger question. That is - how much more subversion can either India or the non-Muslim world afford to tolerate? Or is the subversion going to be allowed to continue until first India and later the rest of the non-Muslim world becomes incapable of resisting the expansion of Islam?

Islam believes that Infidels are so adverse to the use of nuclear weapons, that time is on its side. It has realised that for the time being, America is impregnable. But India, on the other hand, with it's own enormous and growing Muslim population, is far from impregnable. It is growing more and more vulnerable to being undermined and destabilised.

Islam, it seems to me, is making careful, long-term calculations in the matter - and so far its calculations are producing results more favourable to Islam than to the rest of the world.

It all makes me wonder whether the idea that we must now at all costs make every effort to prevent a war between Pakistan and India - is an entirely wise policy. I fear that in the long term it will turn out to have been a great mistake. I think that our efforts would be better directed towards the preservation of India.

Verity

Further to my previous post, in which I said we have to take our countries back, France, under Chirac, made a start by banning the hijab on school property. The hijab is just the headscarf, but he felt that even that was too delineating and prevented Muslim girls from integrating properly and feeling French. (It was already illegal for any adult woman woman to work in any public office, such as a mairie, wearing a headdress.)

Of course, the fathers and brothers flung themselves around in the streets, burned a few hundred cars, there were demonstrations, etc. But Chirac held his nerve. I was living in France at the time and was amazed.

About six months after the law had been passed, there were some surveys of Muslim women done (away from the men in their families, so they spoke freely) and they were almost unanimously in favour of the ban. Some of them were second generation French and spoke of the awfulness at school of being "different" and they were pleased that their own daughters would be able to grow up to regard themselves as normal French women.

That's what it takes. Laws and having the sang-froid to enforce them. (By the way, the niqab is banned by law in Turkey and Morocco. Which tells you that no matter what they claim in Bradford and Luton, it's just a costume, not a religious requirement.)

Verity

The Mail of Sunday is reporting that the money for the murderous atrocities in Bombay was raised in British mosques.

How much further can we sink before we take our own country back?