India’s 26/11 was not America’s 9/11, Current affairs, NewAgeIslam.com

Current affairs

India’s 26/11 was not America’s 9/11

The vanished moment

By-Mihir S. Sharma

Nov 27, 2009

9/11 permeated every experience for that first year because, for the US, it was completely, shockingly, harrowingly unprecedented. Nobody — not trusted anchors, not politicians, not comedians — had any instincts that could help: each was accustomed to dealing with tragedy from a distance. And the average American was even more unprepared for the sudden shock of vulnerability, the thought that their country, so distant from anywhere problematic, could no longer rely on that physical remoteness. Which is why parts of the US where politicians can win elections by denouncing big cities nevertheless responded so strongly to the attacks on New York and DC: the geographical isolation was shared, the freshly-felt insecurity too. They hadn’t realised that they were targets; they were trying to figure out why.

Indians knew terrorism. The attacks horrified, but we knew what about them horrified: the scale, the targets, the cold-bloodedness. It was not as if we discovered for the first time a year ago that there was an outside world, in which many people disliked us enough to try to kill as many of us as spectacularly as possible. That explains both the loudest initial reaction — anger instead of shock, and not at the perpetrators but at the government and at “politicians” — as also how, over the year that followed, people began to shout themselves hoarse about the mysterious disappearance of expressions of that anger.

But shouting won’t help. India just doesn’t feel the same way that America did about 9/11, and no number of borrowed phrases — “Lest We Forget”, anyone? — will change that. And we should be glad of that. Because the feverish atmosphere that American public life had that year was in no way a good thing. Individuals made misjudgements then that they have since regretted; and so, far worse, did the organs of government, rushing panicked into policies since repudiated — such as “waterboarding” of detainees — and which have now been blamed by officials on the paranoia that seemed everywhere those months.

http://newageislam.com/india%E2%80%99s-26/11-was-not-america%E2%80%99s-9/11/current-affairs/d/2153

How extremists groomed loner to be suicide bomber, Islamic World News, NewAgeIslam.com

Islamic World News

How extremists groomed loner to be suicide bomber

He would spend hours closeted away, surfing the internet in his darkened bedroom or at a local café. After he strayed on to fundamentalist Islam websites, Muslim extremists saw an opportunity to mould Reilly's pliable mind, rendered obsessive by Asperger's.

Reilly converted to Islam in 2004 and extremists cultivated in him a hatred of the West. Last year he changed his name to Mohammad Abdulaziz Rashid Saeed-Alim.

Neighbours who knew him were quick to label him a "reclusive oddball", who used an image of the 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre in New York as a screensaver.

But the full extent of his manipulators' influence was only revealed when police discovered his suicide note, in which he chillingly paraphrased a comment made by Osama bin Laden in the wake of the 11 September attacks and adopted by many radicals, stating: "We love death as you love life."

It was not just a burning hatred that his religious mentors instilled in Reilly – they also gave him the tools with which to express it. It was also on jihadist websites that he discovered how a highly volatile bomb could be constructed using caustic soda, kerosene and nails.

http://newageislam.com/how-extremists-groomed-loner-to-be-suicide-bomber/islamic-world-news/d/899

U.K. bomb plotters admit 'nuisance', Islam,Terrorism and Jihad, NewAgeISlam.com

Islam,Terrorism and Jihad

U.K. bomb plotters admit 'nuisance'

Jul 16, 2008

Mitch Potter, Europe Bureau

It was also revealed that they and two other defendants – Ibrahim Savant, 27, and Umar Islam, 30 – pleaded guilty to the public nuisance charge relating to videos discovered after their August 2006 roundup by British security teams in raids in and around London.

All eight face maximum life sentences on the more severe charges of conspiracy to commit mass murder using explosives disguised in soft-drink bottles. The jury is to weigh that question after the trial comes to a close next week.

British terrorism experts said the unexpected switch to guilty pleas on lesser charges further complicates the trial's outcome and also raises new questions about the gravity of the original threat, which prosecutors say was taking shape against seven specific flights from London's Heathrow Airport to destinations including Toronto, Montreal, Chicago, New York, San Francisco and Washington.

"You have to ask yourself, why would the defendants agree to the insane legal defence of pleading guilty to lesser charges when they face life in prison? That just is not done – and it makes you question the whole case itself," said Bob Ayers, a defence and security expert with the London-based think-tank Chatham House.

http://newageislam.com/u.k.-bomb-plotters-admit--nuisance-/islam,terrorism-and-jihad/d/236