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Twenty-five years ago, the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut started a trend Date published: 4/18/2008
TWENTY-FIVE years ago today, Immediately after the bombing, a group called Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility, but in 2003, a district-court judge in Washington, hearing a lawsuit for damages from the survivors, found that Hezbollah--financed by senior Iranian government officials--was behind the blast. The destruction of the Beirut embassy was followed just six months later by the twin bombings--just 20 seconds apart--of the U.S. Marine Corps barracks and the building that housed the French peacekeeping force in Beirut. More than 400 people died. Similar incidents followed, including the 1998 car-bomb attacks by al-Qaida on the U.S. Embassies in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya; the 2002 truck bombing of the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan; and the most horrific suicide bombings of all--the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. What would prompt a person to become a walking bomb? An MSNBC interview with a source in Hamas, a Palestinian terror organization, yielded this quote: "The bombers believe they are sent on their missions by God, and by the time they're ready to be strapped with explosives, say the sources, they have reached a hypnotic state. Their rationale: that by blowing themselves up in a crowd of Israelis, they are forging their own gateway to Heaven." Many Muslims decry suicide bombings, citing a Quranic prohibition against killing oneself, and dispute the claim that suicides achieve martyrdom. Still, it has become a preferred technique of many Islamist groups, some of which have used women, young children, animals, and even retarded people as their bomb-conveyers. On Wednesday, a suicide bomber killed at least 50 people at the funeral of two anti-al-Qaida Sunni Iraqis. What began in Beirut continues today--a perversion of religion and a desecration of human life.
It's estimated that the world Muslim population is almost 2 billion. So lets say that the radical muslims make up only 2% of that. That leave 40 million wacko, could-be, would-be suicide bombers. That's not very comforting.
Dear Mr. Inciting FLS Editorial Writer: We are quite familiar with the tiny minority of Muslims who approve of suicide bombings. The vast majority of the Islamic world condemns them. (Kind of like the majority of Christians don't believe in blowing up abortion clinics). Will your next editorial be about the Barberry Pirates?
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