Defying the devil within
The News Review:
- Defying the devil within
- Helen Yemm answers your questions
- Talking with the jihadists
- WHY? That’s the question that has stumped world experts
Defying the devil within
The Age – Jul 16, 2005
The term “home-grown” usually relates to wholesome food. It isshort-hand for “authentic”, for everything good in life. The opposite to home-grown is something that is imported,mass-produced, perhaps even tainted by the heavy hand of greed:home-grown food is good, McDonald’s bad, for example. But England has been forced to enlarge its meaning of home-grownto encompass home-grown terrorists. More specifically, four orpossibly five young British-born men of mostly Pakistani parentage,previously known to enjoy cricket and laughing, who somehow came tobelieve in the glory of turning themselves into martyrs. The English woke to find that the devil is not out there beyondthe door but already inside the house. He is busy among us, thecanker “eating up Love’s tender spring”…
The English woke to find that the devil is not out there beyondthe door but already inside the house. He is busy among us, thecanker “eating up Love’s tender spring”. Home-grown bard WilliamShakespeare understood that malignancy (or at least its potential)is deeply rooted in the human soul. It is a basic tenet accepted bymost Christians (or “infidels” as those who believe in a new jihadwould have it) that each of us is born with original sin. This isnot news that people want to hear. But what kind of person imagines that having his head blown fromhis body is the straightest path to God? (Intelligence personnelmade swift progress after they found a head on the bombed bus:Israeli bomb experts advised them that this was usually whathappened to the head of a suicide bomber holding a bomb). And at what point does malignancy in the human heart rouseitself to its fullest roar? Certainly class rage can fuel certainyoung men and women, knowing that they will have to work like dogsfor the rest of their lives while others grow rich; there is, too,a moment in some young men’s lives when the idea of battle, of war,of guns, can blaze like joy.
Helen Yemm answers your questions
Telegraph.co.uk – Jul 16, 2005
Is it worth the effort, she asks, of potting up some of the myriad shrub seedlings that seem to grow easily in the gravel at the edge of her drive, or will they take years to do anything? advertisement. My particular offspring of this quick-growing shrub seem to have eye-catchingly dark flowers and berries. So my answer to the first part of Nicole’s question is yes, it is worth it – if you have the space, time and inclination to look after little, “free” plants. It is usually easy to identify broadly what you have by looking at the young foliage, but it can be fun to see what variations and surprises turn up. The seedlings are quite vulnerable in infancy, having been moved into pots of sandy compost from where they naturally wanted to grow, but they soon perk up and take off.
Talking with the jihadists
Guardian Unlimited – Jul 16, 2005
In Pentagon language, US forces are fighting a “thinking” and “adapting” enemy. The most important conclusion to draw from the July 7 terrorist bombings in London is that part of that enemy’s “adaptation” is to continue the strikes against civilian targets in western capitals and western interests and tourist venues throughout the world that began with the attacks of September 11 2001 on New York and Washington, and have continued in such places as Bali, Istanbul, Madrid and now London. The four terrorists implicated so far in the London bombings, as well as others who seem to have abetted the plot, all appear to have been members of the British Muslim community rather than a terrorist cell infiltrated from outside the UK. More worryingly still, they appear to have grown up in families that utterly rejected Islamist extremism and, in effect, their jihadism appears to have been self-motivated.
WHY? That’s the question that has stumped world experts
NEWS.com.au – Jul 16, 2005
A government-commissioned report into 2001 race riots involving sub-continental youth and police in West Yorkshire – home county of the four suicide bombers – found that whites and non-whites in the UK were leading separate lives, with no social or cultural contact and no sense of belonging to the same nation. Meanwhile, the British Muslim community stands accused of failing to confront militant elements. Britain’s first home-grown Muslim MP, Shaid Malik, says the Islamic community needs to do more to drive “evil and extremism” from its midst. Other Muslims say their leaders can no longer stick to the shibboleth that Islam has nothing to do with the atrocities. “I stand with those Muslims who insist that certain passages (of the Koran) are being politically exploited,” said Irshad Maji, author of The Trouble with Islam: A Wake-Up Call for Honesty and Change. Leading London Muslim spokesman Al-Faliq believes extremism appeals to Muslims who feel alienated by British culture and caught between their traditional family ways and Western life. One teenager this week summed up the dilemma facing Muslim youth: “We are being forced by the system to make a choice – either assimilate, compromise ourselves, or choose separatism whereby we create our own institutions.