Fading Exclamations

temporal: It is sad that on this day, the second anniversary of the 9/11 you chose to write not about any of the real heroes of 9/11 - the over three thousand men and women who were killed that day, the over 300 firemen and 70 policemen who lay down their lives while trying to save the lives of others. Or you could even have written about the 3000 men and women who were going about their peaceful business that day, when their lives were brutally cut short. These included over 100 young Pakistani men and women, I may add, many of them among the best and the brightest Pakistan had to offer to the world.

Yet, you chose to make a hero out of that bast!ard Bin Laden. You can live in a fool`s paradise with your consipracy theories, or you can have had the moral courage to face the reality of what happened that day. You have chosen the former. It is indeed sad to see that even supposedly thinking muslims are lacking in the moral fibre needed to face reality.

T,

Although not really an eloquent piece of writing, or even a cohesive one, it does drive the point home: Is Osama, in his own ignorant and violent way, a catalyst for a deep change the world of Islam was due for some time? Has he rudely awaken the world of Islam with an earthquake? Would this force the Muslims to introspect and ask the most uncomfortable questions which they perhaps always wanted to but, up until now, never dared? Could this be the beginning of Islamic Renaissance? Does this nightmare bode well for the Islamic Civilization? Is there a silver lining to this ominous cloud? Is there an opportunity in this crisis? My answer to all those questions are: YES.

For that, I thank you for writing this article.

tahmed32

...bhai i would settle for an apology after you have coooled down and read this in full...i may be a dreamer...but TO is no fool`s paradise:)

rgds,

t

There is a grammatical error in my post...

The correct sentence should read “My answer to all those questions is: YES.”

This is just so before people get on my case...!!!

temporal,

......... i don`t know how to say this, but this is a terrible piece of writing - not something expected from a master of of words like you .........

.......... and i hope - god, i hope - you are not suggesting that osama was created by the cia or some other spooks that lurk in the ummah`s god-crazed imagination!......... please say that is not so!........... i hope you have not been infected by the virus that is slowly spreading among the jahiliya aka the ummah..............

............. please tell me you ran into some bad whiskey!.......... this is killing me ......... and then tahmed asks why i drink ............. ya allah, forgive temporal, he knows not what he does..............jesus, bhagwan, jay............ anyone!

.......... i will come back and read this again, just to make sure you are not saying what i think you are saying ............ i am distraught .......... i am beginning to loose faith in single malt whiskey and the goodness of man ! .............

......... temporal, please .................

Michael Meacher`s article may be read online here:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1036571,00.html

I am reproducing it here for your enjoyment:


Massive attention has now been given - and rightly so - to the reasons why Britain went to war against Iraq. But far too little attention has focused on why the US went to war, and that throws light on British motives too. The conventional explanation is that after the Twin Towers were hit, retaliation against al-Qaida bases in Afghanistan was a natural first step in launching a global war against terrorism. Then, because Saddam Hussein was alleged by the US and UK governments to retain weapons of mass destruction, the war could be extended to Iraq as well. However this theory does not fit all the facts. The truth may be a great deal murkier.
We now know that a blueprint for the creation of a global Pax Americana was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice-president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld`s deputy), Jeb Bush (George Bush`s younger brother) and Lewis Libby (Cheney`s chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America`s Defences, was written in September 2000 by the neoconservative think tank, Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

The plan shows Bush`s cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says ``while the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.``

The PNAC blueprint supports an earlier document attributed to Wolfowitz and Libby which said the US must ``discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role``. It refers to key allies such as the UK as ``the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership``. It describes peacekeeping missions as ``demanding American political leadership rather than that of the UN``. It says ``even should Saddam pass from the scene``, US bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain permanently... as ``Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests as Iraq has``. It spotlights China for ``regime change``, saying ``it is time to increase the presence of American forces in SE Asia``.

The document also calls for the creation of ``US space forces`` to dominate space, and the total control of cyberspace to prevent ``enemies`` using the internet against the US. It also hints that the US may consider developing biological weapons ``that can target specific genotypes [and] may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool``.

Finally - written a year before 9/11 - it pinpoints North Korea, Syria and Iran as dangerous regimes, and says their existence justifies the creation of a ``worldwide command and control system``. This is a blueprint for US world domination. But before it is dismissed as an agenda for rightwing fantasists, it is clear it provides a much better explanation of what actually happened before, during and after 9/11 than the global war on terrorism thesis. This can be seen in several ways.

First, it is clear the US authorities did little or nothing to pre-empt the events of 9/11. It is known that at least 11 countries provided advance warning to the US of the 9/11 attacks. Two senior Mossad experts were sent to Washington in August 2001 to alert the CIA and FBI to a cell of 200 terrorists said to be preparing a big operation (Daily Telegraph, September 16 2001). The list they provided included the names of four of the 9/11 hijackers, none of whom was arrested.

It had been known as early as 1996 that there were plans to hit Washington targets with aeroplanes. Then in 1999 a US national intelligence council report noted that ``al-Qaida suicide bombers could crash-land an aircraft packed with high explosives into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the CIA, or the White House``.

Fifteen of the 9/11 hijackers obtained their visas in Saudi Arabia. Michael Springman, the former head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah, has stated that since 1987 the CIA had been illicitly issuing visas to unqualified applicants from the Middle East and bringing them to the US for training in terrorism for the Afghan war in collaboration with Bin Laden (BBC, November 6 2001). It seems this operation continued after the Afghan war for other purposes. It is also reported that five of the hijackers received training at secure US military installations in the 1990s (Newsweek, September 15 2001).

Instructive leads prior to 9/11 were not followed up. French Moroccan flight student Zacarias Moussaoui (now thought to be the 20th hijacker) was arrested in August 2001 after an instructor reported he showed a suspicious interest in learning how to steer large airliners. When US agents learned from French intelligence he had radical Islamist ties, they sought a warrant to search his computer, which contained clues to the September 11 mission (Times, November 3 2001). But they were turned down by the FBI. One agent wrote, a month before 9/11, that Moussaoui might be planning to crash into the Twin Towers (Newsweek, May 20 2002).

All of this makes it all the more astonishing - on the war on terrorism perspective - that there was such slow reaction on September 11 itself. The first hijacking was suspected at not later than 8.20am, and the last hijacked aircraft crashed in Pennsylvania at 10.06am. Not a single fighter plane was scrambled to investigate from the US Andrews airforce base, just 10 miles from Washington DC, until after the third plane had hit the Pentagon at 9.38 am. Why not? There were standard FAA intercept procedures for hijacked aircraft before 9/11. Between September 2000 and June 2001 the US military launched fighter aircraft on 67 occasions to chase suspicious aircraft (AP, August 13 2002). It is a US legal requirement that once an aircraft has moved significantly off its flight plan, fighter planes are sent up to investigate.

Was this inaction simply the result of key people disregarding, or being ignorant of, the evidence? Or could US air security operations have been deliberately stood down on September 11? If so, why, and on whose authority? The former US federal crimes prosecutor, John Loftus, has said: ``The information provided by European intelligence services prior to 9/11 was so extensive that it is no longer possible for either the CIA or FBI to assert a defence of incompetence.``

Nor is the US response after 9/11 any better. No serious attempt has ever been made to catch Bin Laden. In late September and early October 2001, leaders of Pakistan`s two Islamist parties negotiated Bin Laden`s extradition to Pakistan to stand trial for 9/11. However, a US official said, significantly, that ``casting our objectives too narrowly`` risked ``a premature collapse of the international effort if by some lucky chance Mr Bin Laden was captured``. The US chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Myers, went so far as to say that ``the goal has never been to get Bin Laden`` (AP, April 5 2002). The whistleblowing FBI agent Robert Wright told ABC News (December 19 2002) that FBI headquarters wanted no arrests. And in November 2001 the US airforce complained it had had al-Qaida and Taliban leaders in its sights as many as 10 times over the previous six weeks, but had been unable to attack because they did not receive permission quickly enough (Time Magazine, May 13 2002). None of this assembled evidence, all of which comes from sources already in the public domain, is compatible with the idea of a real, determined war on terrorism.

The catalogue of evidence does, however, fall into place when set against the PNAC blueprint. From this it seems that the so-called ``war on terrorism`` is being used largely as bogus cover for achieving wider US strategic geopolitical objectives. Indeed Tony Blair himself hinted at this when he said to the Commons liaison committee: ``To be truthful about it, there was no way we could have got the public consent to have suddenly launched a campaign on Afghanistan but for what happened on September 11`` (Times, July 17 2002). Similarly Rumsfeld was so determined to obtain a rationale for an attack on Iraq that on 10 separate occasions he asked the CIA to find evidence linking Iraq to 9/11; the CIA repeatedly came back empty-handed (Time Magazine, May 13 2002).

In fact, 9/11 offered an extremely convenient pretext to put the PNAC plan into action. The evidence again is quite clear that plans for military action against Afghanistan and Iraq were in hand well before 9/11. A report prepared for the US government from the Baker Institute of Public Policy stated in April 2001 that ``the US remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma. Iraq remains a destabilising influence to... the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East``. Submitted to Vice-President Cheney`s energy task group, the report recommended that because this was an unacceptable risk to the US, ``military intervention`` was necessary (Sunday Herald, October 6 2002).

Similar evidence exists in regard to Afghanistan. The BBC reported (September 18 2001) that Niaz Niak, a former Pakistan foreign secretary, was told by senior American officials at a meeting in Berlin in mid-July 2001 that ``military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October``. Until July 2001 the US government saw the Taliban regime as a source of stability in Central Asia that would enable the construction of hydrocarbon pipelines from the oil and gas fields in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan, to the Indian Ocean. But, confronted with the Taliban`s refusal to accept US conditions, the US representatives told them ``either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs`` (Inter Press Service, November 15 2001).

Given this background, it is not surprising that some have seen the US failure to avert the 9/11 attacks as creating an invaluable pretext for attacking Afghanistan in a war that had clearly already been well planned in advance. There is a possible precedent for this. The US national archives reveal that President Roosevelt used exactly this approach in relation to Pearl Harbor on December 7 1941. Some advance warning of the attacks was received, but the information never reached the US fleet. The ensuing national outrage persuaded a reluctant US public to join the second world war. Similarly the PNAC blueprint of September 2000 states that the process of transforming the US into ``tomorrow`s dominant force`` is likely to be a long one in the absence of ``some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor``. The 9/11 attacks allowed the US to press the ``go`` button for a strategy in accordance with the PNAC agenda which it would otherwise have been politically impossible to implement.

The overriding motivation for this political smokescreen is that the US and the UK are beginning to run out of secure hydrocarbon energy supplies. By 2010 the Muslim world will control as much as 60% of the world`s oil production and, even more importantly, 95% of remaining global oil export capacity. As demand is increasing, so supply is decreasing, continually since the 1960s.

This is leading to increasing dependence on foreign oil supplies for both the US and the UK. The US, which in 1990 produced domestically 57% of its total energy demand, is predicted to produce only 39% of its needs by 2010. A DTI minister has admitted that the UK could be facing ``severe`` gas shortages by 2005. The UK government has confirmed that 70% of our electricity will come from gas by 2020, and 90% of that will be imported. In that context it should be noted that Iraq has 110 trillion cubic feet of gas reserves in addition to its oil.

A report from the commission on America`s national interests in July 2000 noted that the most promising new source of world supplies was the Caspian region, and this would relieve US dependence on Saudi Arabia. To diversify supply routes from the Caspian, one pipeline would run westward via Azerbaijan and Georgia to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. Another would extend eastwards through Afghanistan and Pakistan and terminate near the Indian border. This would rescue Enron`s beleaguered power plant at Dabhol on India`s west coast, in which Enron had sunk $3bn investment and whose economic survival was dependent on access to cheap gas.

Nor has the UK been disinterested in this scramble for the remaining world supplies of hydrocarbons, and this may partly explain British participation in US military actions. Lord Browne, chief executive of BP, warned Washington not to carve up Iraq for its own oil companies in the aftermath of war (Guardian, October 30 2002). And when a British foreign minister met Gadaffi in his desert tent in August 2002, it was said that ``the UK does not want to lose out to other European nations already jostling for advantage when it comes to potentially lucrative oil contracts`` with Libya (BBC Online, August 10 2002).

The conclusion of all this analysis must surely be that the ``global war on terrorism`` has the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda - the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project. Is collusion in this myth and junior participation in this project really a proper aspiration for British foreign policy? If there was ever need to justify a more objective British stance, driven by our own independent goals, this whole depressing saga surely provides all the evidence needed for a radical change of course.

· Michael Meacher MP was environment minister from May 1997 to June 2003

I think Bin Laden is a sincere but seriously misguided Muslim who has been driven to commit un-Islamic acts of terrorism due to his lack of understanding of the faith.

I think his grievances against the West and its exploitation of the Islamic world are valid BUT his method to answering them is NOT. However I do agree that what this terrible event has done is exposed Wahabism as the root cause of ``Islamic extremism`` and now we are openly reading in the Western quality press a distinction being made between Sunni Islam and Wahabism for the first time. I think though that though most Muslims will be totally against acts of terror against civilians of any race or creed (it is clearly haram and forbidden in Islam even in war, for example, to kill women and children) they will have an admiration for anyone, rightly or wrongly, who appears to stand up to the West and its arrogance. That I think is probably the most pertinent explanation for why Bin Laden has mass popular support in the Muslim world.

It should be noted that Sunni scholars from all over the world have condemned the acts of terror on 9/11 and the acts of terror in Afghanistan and Iraq which followed. As Muslims we condemn all acts of terrror whether committed by al Qaeda or Imperialist America or anyone else . Michael Meacher (former British Environment Minister) hit the nail on the head though when he wrote last week in the Guardian that the Bush Cabal has just used 9/11 as a convenient, excuse to push forward their plans for American imperialism based on oil-greed and how they ignored warnings from,amongst others, Mossad and the SVR (former KGB) about a possible attack in New York and Washington using aeroplanes. For the pro-Israeli neo-cons who run the White House now 9/11 was a godsend. Understandibly the truth hurts and the USA have been furiously denying any truth in Mr., Meacher`s article.

Temporal does also make a valid point however about how 9/11 has made Muslims be more introspective about their faith. That is a good thing. This tragedy could well be the
spark which enables true Islam to take the centre ground from the more Wahabist forms which have become popularised due to Saudi petrodollars and US realpolitik and hence, it could be that OBL achieves global supremacy for Islam in a way which he totally didn`t realise.
Allah and His Messenger Know Best!

temporal,

.......... i went out to dinner, came back, and read this piece of trash again ............. sorry, but that is what it is - a piece of trash ............ and this is where i begin to loose any hope that the ummah can be reformed ............ i know, i know... you have suggested that osama `` has forced the Muslims around the globe to rethink their religion. He has unwittingly provided a synergetic impetus``........ i don`t think so ............. he has unleashed the devil that forced you to subscribe to the crazy conspiaracy theories as a knee-jerk reaction ..........he has brought out the worst in followers of a faith that was deeply flawed to start with .............. there is no hope........indeed, we are doomed ................

temporal:
It is easy to build wild stories by picking and choosing selectively from a mass of confusing information. Posner, a veteran of this genre, did it to arrive at one set of theory. Michael Meacher used the same method to build an opposite story (thanks naqsh for posting the guardian article). The truth will perhaps never be known.

``With the fall of USSR the military-industrial complex got the wind knocked out. Hurriedly the conservative think tanks started working over time to create a new opponent. Viola! How about those damn Muslims? ``

Too simple! In fact the process started much earlier and has been gradual. It started with the Ayatollahs coming to power in Iran in 1979. Back then, the ignorant West did differentiate between shias who were labelled as Muslim fanatics and Saudi wahabis who were labelled nice, moderate sunnis who provided those wonderful Mujahideen against the soviets.

The tide really turned with the fatwa against Salman Rushdie, which neatly coincided with the end of the Soviet empire. That was the act which united the entire Muslim community despite their many serious differences. The fury of the Muslim protests, especially by Muslims in the West, and the almost total support, or at least sympathy, for the protesters by moderate Muslims and even scholars (I mean University Professors in the West and not the Mullahs) is what created the prospect of a new adversary to the West. On a local scale, something similar happened in India at the time of the Supreme Court verdict in the Shah Bano case.

``Is Islam a religion of peace or violence? Do Muslims support suicide bombing. Does Islam unjustly favours men? How to loosen the Muslim pseudo-scholar’s grip. How to be tolerant of other religions? How to live and let live? ``

Isn`t this what is being discussed at chowk all the time?

dost-mittar:

Posner book came out after the death of all conspirators, so it wa easy to likk dead people, which may or may not be true. The other conspiracy theory of US allowing to to happen in order to make excuse to control gulf region and energy rsources is laughable. Nobody could have stopped US to go into Afghanistan or Iraq without having to cause billions in damage just to make an excuse. Didn`t USA go into Iraq based on lame excuse of WMDs? Who in the world would have challenged USA to if they wanted to remove a Pakistani intelligence installed government of Taliban in Afghanistan, recogniced by only three countries with one retrieving the recognition?

Every nation has several contingency plans for preparedness based on various scenarios. Even Pakistan had contingenct plan to capture Srinagar (see Benazir`s interview in some Indian magazine), India would be stupid to not have contingency plan to bomb nuclear facilities of Pakistan or capture Lahore. Similarly many think thanks in USA present such plans based on propbable scenarios. The one USA-haters are never getting tired of presenting, the neo-con (PNAC) report is one such contingency report. There are many more much explosive reports in existance on the record and keep being produced based on various scenarios all the time. It does not make any sense at all to allow such a massive scale destruction in order to create justification for the most powerful nation on earth. They did not need it and they could have gotten away with much smaller scale event just as Hitler used firing few shots by Poles on German ships.

I totally disagree with rmporal and godot about the possibility of Osama, the bi*tch expediting reformation inadvertantly. He has already cause destruction of livelihoods of tens of thousands of people he wished to represent. He has given heartburns to millions more. The ones more likely to be on the forefront of reformation are pushed over the edge. Many have become like me who don`t give a shit about Islam and its reformation any more. The exodus of liberals from the ranks of Muslims have caused the hold of conservatives and mullahs stronger on Muslim populace. When did MMA win so many seats in Pakistan? Before 9/11 or after 9/11? The mosques are full and hijabs ever more in vogue.

temporal: If you want a ``true muslim hero`` here is one a 23 year old Pakistani hero (I have cut and paste a newspaper article on him below). There were 3000 such heros that day. Ordinary people who left their homes to do something constructive for society. Not those arrogant, half-brained Arabs who murdered those people. For you to glorify the murdering ba!stard ben laden on this sad day is simply outrageous. The only thing that man deserves is a noose around his neck. Along with the necks of a few thousand other Arab ba!stards who think it is OK to kill innocent people.

I share with hamidm the deep disappointment that even you, one of the more reasonable people on chowk, could write such a stupid article. Not only stupid, but insulting to the memory of those who were killed that day. I think you need to get your moral compass fixed.

The article on the person whom you should be remembering as a ``true muslim hero`` (and not some arrogant, murdering Arab bast!ard) follows:


NEW YORK: The remains of a 23-year-old man of Pakistani descent, whose disappearance was shrouded in mystery, were found near the north tower of the World Trade Center (WTC) wreckage and identified on March 21, according to the New York Medical Examiner’s Office.

Unlike most who were missing on Sept. 11, the case of Mohammad Salman Hamdani was different as he neither worked at the trade center nor had any appointment there, The New York Times reported.

He just did not show up at his workplace and never came home, the report added.

There were rumors surrounding his disappearance, suggesting that he was either connected to the terrorists or hiding out or scheming to profit from the tragedy, the report said.

However, all rumors have now been put to rest and his reputation has been redeemed.

The report said that Hamdani, a graduate of Queens College, went downtown to help the victims. He had been a part-time ambulance driver and emergency worker, and was also a police cadet for a while. The speculation is that Hamdani, who wanted to be a doctor, must have seen the destruction from the elevated No. 7 subway line, and headed toward the towers instead of going to his job as a research assistant at Rockefeller University.

The Hamdani family, who own a candy store in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and immigrated from Pakistan 22 years ago, initially assumed that that their eldest son had died in the terrorist attack, the report said. But then, in an ironic twist, they began to hope that he had been arrested because he was Muslim. The families of some people arrested in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks were not notified.

Hamdani’s mother held on to hope until last week, which brought tragic finality to her son’s disappearance. The family plans to hold funeral services at the Islamic Cultural Center of New York in the Upper East Side in Manhattan. They plan to invite dignitaries, including Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly, who has said that he expects to attend, the report said.

tahmed sahib:

are you saying that blind support of israel, blind support of house of saud, overthrow of mossadeq and blind support of shah, support of saddam in his quest for power, support of corrupt leadership in egypt and the participation with russians in destruction of afghanistan had nothing to do with 9-11?

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Is there a mechanism in Islam to kick out Osama from Islam?

For instance if christian priests marry under roman catholic system, then they are defrocked.

Something like that. Now that would tell the world Islam can do something about Osama.

Temporal:

I left a message yesterday around the same time when I was posting messages on other topics, but then the system crashed and I think the message was not posted.

This is an article that challenges our pre-conceived notions. My two bits on the matter:

1. All Pakistanis felt extreme pain on the occasion, because 3,000 people had perished in that cowardly attack on humanity. 1 family is personally known to me who lost their son in the attack. I can relate to the pain of the bereaved.

2. Pakistanis should stand by the right. OBL is a criminal. He has not done a single thing that has gone in the favour Muslims.

3. Yet I believe that the event has been exploited by Israel and India to get public support on the wars for freedom going on in their backyard. These two countries have turned the war on terrorism into a War on Islam. For example, you would have noticed that it is only Indians who thrash Islam and its religious personalities at will. Their view of Pakistan as a Talibani extremist society, as reflected by almost all the posts, reflects their brain-washing by the Government and media alike, using religion as point-scoring matter.

4. USA might have also exploited the situation to give a face in the shape of a rascal like OBL to Islam (which was previously faceless) as the next big enemy after the demise of the USSR. Luckily for us, Muslim leadership knelt down in front of the great Power, making the US administration say, ``sh*t, how do we make an enemy out of ready losers?``. If our leadership had shown an iota of resistance, all the Muslims would have gotten a kick in our rear end and barbed bamboos down you know where.

5. A point that should be debated however, is that whether the USA immediately changed its strategy to create an enemy in the form of Islam by twisting our arms so that we, as a group, rebel and then the US Gov. can turn back to their public and say , ``See here. Did not we tell you that these bastar*s are our enemy?``.

My final words to the Muslims all over the world, including the extremist narrow-minded Mullas - follow the strategy of ANUS PROTECTUS.

Temporal,

You ask whether Osama Bin Laden has inadvertently forced Muslims to question their religious values. They have. And what do you get: Bali Bombings; Posters on sale from Peshawar to Karachi eulogizing Osama; Muslims around the world counteracting to the US’s war on terror by resolving to take up arms.

Islam is a complicated religion. It’s spiritual (and the study of one’s self is far from being a secondary school subject – indeed, the world’s best and brightest have yet to come up with anything remotely resembling an answer). More than that, it claims to be political (a dimension that most religions practiced in the West and other parts of the world have more or less ceased to concentrate upon). These two aspects are often confused when one talks of Islam as a religion. Wires can get crossed.

I concede that Osama may have forced some people to examine the spiritual aspect of Islam. To question dogma which promotes revenge and destruction. But, and you have to ask yourself this, isn’t such thinking is really an examination of the political dimension of Islam. What I’m trying to say is that Osama hasn’t made Muslims softer spiritually. He’s only made them harder politically.

That’s not much of an achievement. Especially when you consider how the Muslim political hardening is referred to as “fundamentalism”.

In any case, 9/11 has certainly afforded me the odd raised eyebrow whenever I answer questions as to my religious beliefs. I confess that, to avoid difficult questions, I diffuse the situation with an off hand “I’m agnostic”. That’s how Osama has changed my life. And I don’t think it’s for the better. Why should I be ashamed of the God I believe in if a few people on this planet have embarked on a political agenda in His name.

Regards,
Rafay