When will Islam damn the chlorine bombers?

[rodeodance]

When will Islam damn the chlorine bombers?


The West bears much of the blame for the situation in Iraq, but as it descends further into barbaric civil war, the Islamic world cannot keep using us as an alibi

Henry Porter
Sunday April 22, 2007
The Observer

At least nine of the large-scale attacks in Iraq since the beginning of the year have involved the use of chlorine. These bombs strike a particular fear because if people are not killed by the blast, they may easily die an agonising death when the chlorine is dispersed and inhaled.

Chlorine reacts with the water in moist human tissue, such as the eyes, nose, throat and lungs, and forms an acid which then burns the tissue. It was first used as a weapon during the First World War in April 1915 by a German chemist named Fritz Haber who synchronised the release from 6,000 cylinders along a four-mile stretch of the front line. The attack caused the death of about 5,000 allied troops with another 10,000 suffering from inhalation, skin burns and blinding. The following month, Haber returned to his family in Berlin. His wife, Clara, also a scientist, was so repelled by what he had done that she shot and killed herself. Haber won the Nobel Prize in 1918 for his work with ammonia.

Article continues
The gas bombs have a special significance with Iraqis because of the use of chemical weapons by Saddam Hussein in Halabja 19 years ago. In most cases, the gas is consumed by the explosion, but when a truck bomb exploded in Ramadi in Anbar province on 6 April, scores of people suffered from the effects of chlorine.
..........

We turn away, taking a perhaps rather odd refuge in the certainty that this is all the fault of the neoconservatives, of the arrogance of Bush and Blair and what is strangely called a policy of 'liberal intervention'. A majority were against the war in 2003 and almost everyone is now..........



http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2062844,00.html

[azurnoir]

1. Sorry to say but

it is not going to happen, no Muslim is going to openly condemn what another does in Iraq at least not while we're still there. The underlying attitude of western non-Muslims that to not condemn is to condone is not helping either, much like our condemning the ruling mullahs and Sharia law on one hand and then decrying the Baathists who are secular on the other. Both could be perceived as excuses to cover a prejudice against Islam.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

2. It's more than that

"Islam" can't condemn the chlorine bombers because there is no "Islam Central." It's a very decentralized religion with no authority who is recognized worldwide.

There are only local authorities.

[shenmue]

3. There may be no unified central leadership...

but an individual figure could issue a condemnation if he wanted. In theory.

[bemildred]

4. This guy is an idiot.

I can assure him that the muslims that are dodging the chlorine bombs would be more than happy to damn the bombers. What the Hell else he wants, I don't see. I'm sure the various Kings and Ayats would be happy to do it too, if it were brought to their attention in the right way, but this sort of impotent hand-wringing and blame-shifting won't do the job. Don't expect to see the grand poobahs of the muslim world run down the street yelling "Yes, yes, I've been derelict, please forgive me!" because of this sort of accusatory drivel. This sort of thinking about the muslims (or any other grouping) as though they were the Borg is dumb and ignorant.