::: Star Weekend Magazine :::

Chintito

British Law Against
Islamic Religion (BLAIR)

Chintito

Antiwar rallies in Britain have displayed placards depicting him as B-liar, and why not? But respecting the leader, wayward though he is, of longstanding rulers of this land turned longstanding friend, it is my obligation to address him by his given name.

After successively lying to the world first on Afghanistan and then on Iraq, and in the process continuing to kill, maim, torture and humiliate in those occupied countries innocent Muslim men, women, children and newborns, as the better half of the world's most despicable duo, British PM Tony Blair last Friday proposed a series of so-called measures against terrorism in post 7/7 Britain that even the British consider too far-fetched and non-effective to curb a repetition of the heinous crime on London's transport system.

Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy warned that the crackdown could alienate the law-abiding majority of Britain's 1.8 million Muslims and inflame tensions.

It has been said in this column before that it is impossible to stop a person who is committed to sacrifice his or her life for a cause, right or wrong. They can and will strike because they are not afraid to give up one's most precious possession --their life.

Mr Blair wants to expel foreign nationals who incite terrorism, shut down <>masjids<> breeding fanaticism and blacklist extremist clerics. (Reuters, AFP, AP, BBC Online)

You do not speak with the tongue of a Labour, rather as a snooty representative of the world's haves. Listen to London Mayor Ken Livingstone and you should be able to hear the lost voice of Britain's Labour. Winston Churchill too would have given up his life had he lived to hear your maniacal utterances. Robin Cook had to give up his.

After the 7/7 incidents you showed the world a picture frame in which only four young men were caught on camera entering Luton train station on that fateful morning. Next you tell the world that those four Muslim youths, admired as peaceful, friendly and sporty guys by their neighbours and without any terror track or police record whatsoever, were found dead in the four different places where the four monstrous London blasts took place. For the ever-so-secure and abused excuse of 'security reasons' you perhaps did not come up with any public evidence to substantiate that police claim. How does the world know that indeed the four were killed in four different places? They have to believe you, and that is as unbelievable as the WMD you never found.

You later showed the world a car that the four youths allegedly used. But you never told us to whom that car belonged. Was it stolen? If so, from whom? You also told the world that the car was packed with explosive materials. But why? The four apparently walking to their death, if indeed they were, were cool as cucumbers with un-primed explosives in their car left to go off in one of the sparsest train stations in England. Do we expect the dead to come back and use them?

Let us assume you are right and that the four Muslim youths are indeed the London bombers. But they are British. Yes they have a religion, but they are British. There are thousands others like them; born and brought up as British Muslims. So where would you deport them? Are only foreign nationals involved in terrorism in your country?

Your <>masjid<> ban proposal stinks of the infamous crusade. You never employed such gutter tactics on churches when Christians were bombing Christians to smithereens, or as the Irish would say 'smidirín'. You chose to talk to them, for long dubbed as terrorists, and bore fruits. There is also no better way to deal with terrorists who follow religions other than Christianity.

The Irish Republican Army (non Muslim) issued a statement after their bombing of the Grand Hotel in Brighton failed to kill PM Margaret Thatcher, 'Today we were unlucky. But remember, we have only to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky always'. No church was threatened then.

Can you Mr Blair guarantee that a non-Muslim will never ever again set off a bomb in Britain? Do only the Muslims know how to kill the innocent with bombs? A 7/7 takes place everyday in Bush's 'liberated' Iraq. Do not the Iraqis mourn their dead? They do, but you term them as fanaticism. The wailing of a mother for her dead child is same, whether in Arabic or in English.

Will you guarantee that if the next bomber is a Christian anywhere in the world, you shall ban churches as a counter move? Will you close down synagogues if innocent Palestinians are killed by a mad Israeli bomber? Will you advocate shutting down temples if a Hindu is involved in senseless killings?

There is nothing wrong with the religions of the world. The wrong lies in those who perceive another's religion from the perspective of their own belief, be it God or oil.

When expelled Labour leader and Respect Party candidate George Galloway, a Briton by all means, upstaged your candidate to win the parliamentary seat in the UK general election, 2005 from Bethnal Green and Bow, he did tell you in his televised acceptance speech, 'Mr Blair, this is for Iraq'. You let it pass off as the gibberish remarks of a rebellious labour. Heeding to his wise words then may have saved all 56 lives lost.

Referring to the North Vietnamese, US air force chief Curtis Emerson LeMay had said, 'My solution to the problem would be to tell them...they've got to draw in their horns or we're going to bomb them into the Stone Age'. Was that not terrorism? In the end the North Vietnamese outwitted the Americans, who had more bombs than they could store.

On the 60th anniversary of the world's worst terrorism act committed by today's grand missionary of peace, the USA, let us recall Spanish painter and sculptor Pablo Picasso's words, 'The genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima'.