I still can’t get over the inflammatory article I read yesterday. I e-mailed the editor-in-chief of the paper and complained. I encourage everyone else to do so as well. As somebody who has worked in different newsrooms over the last seven years, trust me when I tell you that feedback has an impact. Also, upon hubby’s suggestion, I translated the article into English for those who couldn’t read it in Arabic. Part of the article is below, the rest is in the extended section of this post.
Al-Banna family in al-Salt received greetings for son Raed’s martyrdom in an Iraqi resistance operation
Al-Banna family in al-Salt organized a martyr’s wedding yesterday for their son Raed Mansur al-Banna who blew himself up in an explosive-laden car that he was driving in Baghdad in al-Hilla on March 1.
The father of the martyr proudly received the well-wishers in the tribe’s reception hall in central Jada in the center of the city of Salt. The story of Raed is similar to that of many youth from the city that left for Jihad across the globe. Raed’s appointment with martyrdom came on March 1, when he blew himself up inside an explosive-laden car that he was driving in al-Hilla in Baghdad that resulted in the killing of over 133 people, the majority of whom were Americans.
Raed left his house three months prior to the incident and told his parents he was going to Saudi to perform al Umra (lesser Haj). Raed had just returned from Umra a few weeks before, as he went to take part in the anti-terrorism course organized by the Saudi government, according to his bother Ahmad Mansur al-Banna.
Raed, who was born in 1973, got his BA degree in Law from Muta University in 1995. During the events of September 11, 2001 he was working in California, said his brother. He noted that this incident [Sept. 11] changed him from a normal guy to a religiously devoted one, who committed himself to praying in the mosque while standing side by side with the Egyptian preacher Wajdi Ghanim in the mosques of California.
The news of his martyrdom came two days after he committed the martyrdom operation when someone claiming to be part of the guys of Aljazeera called Raed’s brother and told him the news of the Raed’s martyrdom along with another person from Jordan named Safwan al-Abbadi. He said Raed had been martyred two days previous in an operation executed by the Iraqi resistance.
The caller said that in order to prove that Raed did the operation he would tell his brother the names of Raed’s relatives and that Raed had traveled to the US and UK and had earned a BA in Law and had worked as a lawyer for three years in Jordan. He also said that Raed had requested a payment of $100 be made to someone that had business dealings with him in the US. But the caller said that they should wait before they announced his martyrdom just to make sure.
BY THE WAY YOU GUYS, I READ METAL’S TAKE OF THIS ON HIS BLOGG. ITS REALLY GOOD. YOU GUYS SHOULD ALL READ IT.
Nas,
they do have actual weapons. they have bombs. why not attack the military? Why attack innocent people at a funeral of all places. It does not make sense.
I am against war and hate it. But i am not as pasafist. If you are attacked, you attack back. but you do it the way it is supposed to be done, not killing innocent civilians. Yes it is important to understand what drives a person to become a sucide bomber. By understanding it we can fight it, but the U.S. is failing at that unfortunately. With that said, when suicide bombings are done, not only is it sad, disgusting and deplorabel, but it also shows how weak the people who are doing it are.
Likewise Nas, if I have to accept your way of argument, America is there to liberate. But I do not accept your reasoning either. Palestine was ruled by Christians when Omar came to conquer. Egypt, .. you name it. It was not no mans land as you wish it were.
jareer i do not understand your reasoning. you said something about fotoo7aat i.e. conquests. what does that have to do with america being in iraq? the conquests were not imperialistic or to enslave people, it was simply the widening of the borders as was common centuries ago when no “real” nations existed in 20th century sense of the word. It was empires conquering lands. it would be great if the entire world was islamic, is this not the initial goal.
as for non-muslims living in islamic countries, you can fight for your land alongside the muslims in palestine or iraq, there is nothing wrong with that, it’s even being pushed for by the christian clergy in palestine.
the problem people have with this is that it’s religious and specifically because its islam. so ask yourself, what would americans do if they were occupied?
remember bush said once something like “their being occupied, heck i wouldn’t like it if i were occupied”
lastly, it is a brutal thing to blow yourself up for a cause and instead of it being critisized by arabs we should wake up and realise just how bad it is. it deserves nothing less than the recognition that this is how bad it’s gotten. this is how desperate these people are. do u think they would do this if they have actual weapons? of course not.
Ok. Its an occupation. So what ? Arab and Islamic countries once they were not so. They became so because of something called Islamic occupation- you call it “fotoo7aat”. Should we as non moslems living in Islamic countries do the same and blow up ourselves because we are occupied. Stop this ridiculous justification for killing people. Martyrdom is not for such savage people. They are pure killers.
natasha, i think my reply to hubby covers what u said. but not that im not attempting to convince you, im simply stating the obvious…its an occupation…there are lines drawn in the sand…occupation vs. resistance.
hubby, (lol thats a first), thanks for your reply.
Firstly, I cannot possibly say what category this falls under. Its a war, even worse: an occupation. The dust hasn’t even settled and I feel with the media control on this all we hear are fragments. It’s like being in plato’s cave and deciphering shadows on the wall. I leave it to God to be the ultimate judge, i personally don’t even like to label them. I tend to presume inocense till guilt is proven.
Secondly, as for those that were killed or injured. Again this is very hard to say. In many cases in Iraq you have some who are supporting the american occupation. Palestinians used to kill traitors who sold their lands to Zionists or acted as internal spies. Much of the same occurs here. Again, this I leave to God.
Third, it does not matter where he comes from. The man was a muslim and when a muslim land is occupied people will come from all over to fight the fight because religiously it is in their best interest. Similarily America will fight any fight as long as it’s in their best interest, politically, financially, etc.
Lastly, Iraq is devided. You can almost take a ruler and cut up kurds, sunnis and shi3a. the differences are not religious. the kurds have wanted independence as the brutally abused little brother (minority). The Shi3a and the kurds have now seen an oppertunity to play the upper hand. They see America as unstopable and its a matter of ‘if u cant beat’em then u might as well gain from them’. The sunnis however seem unwavering in this department, they see iraq’s biggest problem, the one that must be solved before any nation can be built…is america.
The scourage of suicide bombings has brought the Arab and Muslim worlds down to their knees. Now, media pundits can easily point at Arabs and say, “look, they don’t care about their children, they leave them and carry out suicide missions”.
This heartlessness of Arabs and Muslims that western media pits into the stomach of the non-Arab reader is further extrapolated to mean “Arabs will throw their children at the enemy”, “Arabs will rejoice once a member of the family is killed in a suicide mission”, “Arabs have no culture, no humanity, no compassion if they so readily worship death”.
Of course, we know the above to be false, but what does it matter what we believe. The destinies of the Middle East are not charted in the area itself but among the viewers watching a carnage unfold on television sets in New York, Miami, Tokyo, London, and Canberra.
Suicide bombings are a form of legitimate resistance we are told. But who tells us this? Those that would not dare get into a fist fight, let alone strap explosives around themselves…
For more read ‘To hell with suicide bombers.’
Hubby, right on.
Exactly.
Not Iraqi Sunnis killing Shia. At least the leadership is not Iraqi. It is foreign-based. They want to make Iraq a battlefield.
The Iraqi resistance IS comprised of Sunnis and Shia working together. But you won’t see that in the press because of charlatans and tyrants like AlZarqawi.
Nas,
First, this guy is not even Iraqi, so your argument that he blew himself to liberate his country is bogus.
Second, how can you liberate a country by butchering 130 unarmed people for absolutely no reason. Or do you think that the fact that they were Shia justify their killing? This is outrageous and in no way can it be justified. You can not convince me of this one. It is sheer genocide.