Two terrorist attacks attempted in UK over the weekend

Posted July 1st, 2007 by zeeshanhasan

On Friday the target was a truck bomb outside the Ministry of Sound nightclub in London. Yesterday it was Glasgow airport. From today’s Guardian:

At 3.11pm, a Jeep Cherokee wreathed in flames was crashed into the doors of the main terminal building at Glasgow. Driven by two ‘Asian-looking’ men, it came to a halt as they threw petrol over it and appeared to try to detonate the vehicle. With the help of bystanders, the two men were overpowered and arrested. One was fighting for his life last night, after throwing petrol over himself and setting it alight.

There was a further twist last night as the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley, where the man was being treated, was evacuated. Strathclyde Police later said that the man had possibly been wearing a suicide vest.

Intelligence sources confirmed the attack on Glasgow airport appeared to be aimed at killing passengers.

As with the failed London attack, the explosives and gas canisters which appeared to be in the Jeep did not detonate, a stroke of fortune that may again have saved the lives of hundreds.

Scary stuff. Coincidentally, I gave a lecture to my first-year undergraduate Culture And Ethics class today about Islamic ethics. Practically all of them agreed almost without even thinking that there was no way to justify killing innocent civilians under any kind of Muslim world-view.
Of course, they’re all well-off and well-educated upper-middle-class private university students with a bright future ahead of them. Obviously not everyone falls into that profile.

Comments

Asian Muslims in Britain

On July 1st, 2007 GustavoMustafa says:

Asian Muslims in Britain seem to be an interesting community, such extremism is not tolerated in America or Canada at least out in the open among Muslims here.

Many of the suspected terror cell participants across the Pond are not necessarily economically deprived though.

One was the sibling of a white female model and son of a Tory member of Parliament. One was from a secular Pakistani family, whose one grandfather served in the military for Her Majesty.

Osama bin Laden was not from a poor family, his families have ties to the Bush clan in this country. Many of the Saudis who committed 9/11 came from middle income to upper income households where religion was more a given. Muhammad Atta, the possibly closeted gay Egyptian, came from a secular household whose one female siblings do not veil.

Many terrorist experts warn that we should not fear some "Muslim underclass in the West" being a breeding ground for recruits but the very class and social elite you lecture to.

Two of the five suspects

On July 1st, 2007 GustavoMustafa says:

Two of the five suspects were physicians based in the UK according to CNN. That means they obviously had bright futures and enjoyed certain class privileges.

Your assumptions that only the poor Muslim masses are capable of such gross and random violence is unfounded based on the facts.

However, your classist assumptions could be indicative of prejudice that is common among some Muslims who use class in an attempt to disassociate themselves from those who engage in violence in the name of Islam.