It's a question of distance

Yesterday I claimed that anyone calling themselves a muslim today was morally bankrupt.

Dickie left the following note on DongXi:

When an IRA bomb would go off in London, no-one would think to condem the Irish.
Likewise, a bomb planted by a radical group that claims to be acting in the name of Islam should not lead to the condemnation of all Muslims.
Note that these bombs targeted all commuters, regardless of faith.

Let's deal with this one point at a time. Dickie's right, I wouldn't condemn the Irish for a terrorist bomb detonated in London. I would however condemn the organisation (perhaps the IRA) behind it. I would further call any supporters of that organisation, whether actual supoprters of terrorism or not, morally bankrupt. Not all muslims are terrorists and some muslims will condemn what happened. Those muslims should be distancing themselves from the Islam that supports these acts, because it is morally flawed. I would be saying this about any religious group that was committing acts of terrorism like this.

Salman Rushdi, recently speaking about Islam, described it as a "religion that is failing its people". I could not have put it better. The senior muslim clerics who seriously believe that terrorism has no part to play in Islamic teaching should be expelling the radical militants from the religion, the same way the Catholic church expels priests who have been involved in the sex abuse scandal. In short, if the senior clerics can't separate the Islam that exists now from the terrorists that associate themselves with it, then they should be taking steps to form a compeltely new church that can.

I don't understand the point about targetting people regardless of faith, you'll have to explain that Dickie. One thing I would say about the IRA terrorists however is that they don't tend to target indiscriminately and they do tend to give warnings. They're still scum, but they have more honour than the scum that hit London, Madrid, and New York.

Of course, looking at the broader picture, none of this would be happening if Blair and Idiot-Boy Bush hadn't been playing soldiers in the Middle East in an attempt to make the world "safer". And I give it about 24 hours before Blair starts claiming that this whole thing could have been avoided if we had id cards.