News Report with a GPN Editorial Blog
Two Mosques in Pakistan are Assaulted by Gunmen and Suicide Bombers
Gunmen and suicide bombers stormed two mosques belonging to a minority sect of Ahmadi believers during Friday prayer in Lahore, seizing hostages. The attack killed at least 70 worshipers and wounded 78, the city coordinating officer said. Ahmadi believers, a Muslim religion, is severely discriminated against under Pakistani law. Pakistan does not recognize the Ahmadi sect as part of Islam. At one mosque, dozens of men survived by hiding in the basement. The attacks, which took place within minutes of each other at the mosques are located a few kilometers apart.
Source: Perlez, Jane and Gillani, Waqar (May 28, 2010). Dozens die as 2 mosques in Pakistan are attacked. Global NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/world/asia/29pstan.html?ref=islam
GPN Editorial Blog
On Contemporary Genocidal Terrorism against Two Muslim Mosques and on Man's Instincts for both Genocidal Killing and Goodness
The above story of suicide bombings in a way is nothing more than another of the endless reports coming out of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq; not long ago from Sri Lanka and Israel; periodically from the U.S. although many Americans do not realize that there were reports that 9/11 was a part of a grand series of coordinated multiple suicide bombing attacks; the UK, Moscow; Indonesia, and many other places. It was such endless suicide bombings on which I reported in my 2007 book, Fighting Suicide Bombing: A Worldwide Campaign for Life.
So why bother to report the present story if nothing is really new? We think for several reasons:
In my work with Chanan Rappaport on the development of a Genocide Early Warning System, we identified this couplet of dehumanization and attribution of power to destroy and exterminate as the single most frequent and virulent synergy of dynamics which bring about and enable genocide to occur. I call this "universal antisemitism," in the larger sense that what is notoriously regarded as antisemitism against the Jews - today often disguised as or concealed within otherwise possibly legitimate critiques of Israel -- is in fact a special manifestation of a worldwide disease that, in my judgment, is built into human biology and nature: a need to hold another and others responsible for, or to make them the victims of, our wrongness, errors, limitations, moral failures, weaknesses and the oncoming death of our lives.
My sense is that this is the instinctual substrate of genocide and a major reason why so many beautiful human efforts to improve our human condition and society nonetheless fail so grandly. Predictably with weapons of mass destruction and a large population, the number of human beings who will die of genocide in the 21st century will be greater than the awful number Rummel gives for the 20th century.
Nonetheless, I add that the fact that projecting our weaknesses and inevitable deaths is instinctually built in to us does not mean human beings cannot overcome this loop quite creatively and successfully – owing also to other wonderful instinctual resources that are also built into our human nature of savoring life, fighting to stay alive, joy in nurturing other lives, and qualities of empathy, compassion, caring, love and justice.
So the above recent case history of contemporary genocidal murder needs for us not only to say 'tsk, tsk' but to fight back for life.
-- Israel W. Charny
Please click here for a fully referenced pdf version of this article.
Two Mosques in Pakistan are Assaulted by Gunmen and Suicide Bombers
Gunmen and suicide bombers stormed two mosques belonging to a minority sect of Ahmadi believers during Friday prayer in Lahore, seizing hostages. The attack killed at least 70 worshipers and wounded 78, the city coordinating officer said. Ahmadi believers, a Muslim religion, is severely discriminated against under Pakistani law. Pakistan does not recognize the Ahmadi sect as part of Islam. At one mosque, dozens of men survived by hiding in the basement. The attacks, which took place within minutes of each other at the mosques are located a few kilometers apart.
Source: Perlez, Jane and Gillani, Waqar (May 28, 2010). Dozens die as 2 mosques in Pakistan are attacked. Global NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/world/asia/29pstan.html?ref=islam
GPN Editorial Blog
On Contemporary Genocidal Terrorism against Two Muslim Mosques and on Man's Instincts for both Genocidal Killing and Goodness
The above story of suicide bombings in a way is nothing more than another of the endless reports coming out of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq; not long ago from Sri Lanka and Israel; periodically from the U.S. although many Americans do not realize that there were reports that 9/11 was a part of a grand series of coordinated multiple suicide bombing attacks; the UK, Moscow; Indonesia, and many other places. It was such endless suicide bombings on which I reported in my 2007 book, Fighting Suicide Bombing: A Worldwide Campaign for Life.
So why bother to report the present story if nothing is really new? We think for several reasons:
1. Periodically we need to stop to look at suicide bombing as the new methodology of transnational genocidal terrorism - one which has the greatest threat potential to the future of our puny civilization if and when the devouts will use Weapons of Mass Destruction – as many security agencies and many novelists very much and terrifyingly predict.
2. This is a story of the evolving methodology and skill of genocidal terrorists in coordinated attacks that combine gunmen and suicide bombers.
3. This story illustrates a point made so clearly by German scholar, Gunnar Heinsohn elsewhere in this issue: the overwhelming majority of Muslims are killed by Muslims.
4. For a long time now, attacks take place "anywhere" - one favorite site is places of worship like mosques, others are even hospitals and medical clinics, and of course schools, and there are always markets, public places, transportation vehicles on land, in the air and on the seas. Geneva Conventions regarding warfare against civilians? Our modern world has regressed and there are no conventions.
5. The Muslims who were attacked belong to a minority sect, the Ahmadi, who ‘only’ number some two million people. They are bitterly hated, disparaged and persecuted by establishment Muslims. The point is that if we go around the globe we can list hundreds of religions, sects, ethnicities, tribes, nationalities, language groups and more who are earmarked for being dehumanized in their surroundings as worthless, inferior, disgusting and diseased, even as they are also identified as a supreme danger to the continued existence of the community and people among whom they live.
In my work with Chanan Rappaport on the development of a Genocide Early Warning System, we identified this couplet of dehumanization and attribution of power to destroy and exterminate as the single most frequent and virulent synergy of dynamics which bring about and enable genocide to occur. I call this "universal antisemitism," in the larger sense that what is notoriously regarded as antisemitism against the Jews - today often disguised as or concealed within otherwise possibly legitimate critiques of Israel -- is in fact a special manifestation of a worldwide disease that, in my judgment, is built into human biology and nature: a need to hold another and others responsible for, or to make them the victims of, our wrongness, errors, limitations, moral failures, weaknesses and the oncoming death of our lives.
My sense is that this is the instinctual substrate of genocide and a major reason why so many beautiful human efforts to improve our human condition and society nonetheless fail so grandly. Predictably with weapons of mass destruction and a large population, the number of human beings who will die of genocide in the 21st century will be greater than the awful number Rummel gives for the 20th century.
Nonetheless, I add that the fact that projecting our weaknesses and inevitable deaths is instinctually built in to us does not mean human beings cannot overcome this loop quite creatively and successfully – owing also to other wonderful instinctual resources that are also built into our human nature of savoring life, fighting to stay alive, joy in nurturing other lives, and qualities of empathy, compassion, caring, love and justice.
So the above recent case history of contemporary genocidal murder needs for us not only to say 'tsk, tsk' but to fight back for life.
-- Israel W. Charny
Please click here for a fully referenced pdf version of this article.
