A whiff of the rediculous

Blog is slow to update today, certainly when i've went to look for my last post it hasn't been up yet. So i thought i better try posting something else incase it's this slow later and it looks like i not posted at all today.

1st thing that popped into my head might seem a touch sick. You just cannot miss a headline that says, "Police believe two cells of bombers met up at white-water rafting centre." I await further developments that they also took part in paintballing and go-karting excursions as part of a weekend away for some management training bonding/group work scheme. Possibly encouraging if that were the case, east meets west, a sign that even suicide bombers can engage in western culture?

Ok a bit off colour, but you should see the picture showing them rafting, they look like any bunch of randoms having a good time with cheesy grins, thumbs up and one of the alleged attempted bombers making a peace V sign. Given how close it was to the bombing attempts, presumably they were discussing plans it raise questions to how much we can write them off as evil/insane/mad or any other conveinent labels that makes them wrong and us safely on the moral high ground.

It would be easier for all of us if that was the case, though however removed from reality these people may be they are clearly able to make rational decisions and however much what they are doing is wrong they can clearly rationalise it to themselves. Given the fact that they are british and brought up here it wouldn't suprise me if while clearly committed to their cause that they wern't entirely free from feelings of guilt over what they attempted to do. They at an educated guess rationalised it to themselves as the lesser evil in relation to what motivated them.

Also having read over that i feel i should clarify the british born and bred comment. I don't mean to suggest that other people that have done the same are any more or less human/inhuman. As british muslims i am assuming that these people have been motivated by the suffering caused by UK/US foreign policy to many in muslim lands.

Personaly i can understand that as a motivating factor to reject the UK government. However at the same time i think, muslim you maybe and presumably the impact is more passionately felt by british muslims than the average citizen but lets face it british muslims arn't suffering the way those in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan are. It is harder to understand a young british muslim resorting to such desparate measures. But then i am not a muslim of any persuasion and can only guess at how they feel when they see what happens in the middle east.

Maybe i'm being to generous but motivated to do what they did i can't help but attribute them human feelings to the people they thought they were about to kill. As they must well have known they were not the ones responsible for their grievances. I can only suppose the resolution to kill innocent british citizens was due to the increased impact that would have. It is all to easy to ignore the death and destruction that has went on in the Middle East, only when it is on our own door step does it get our full attention.

Either way, as i said ealsewhere no matter how wrong the actions of terrorists are we mustn't allow that from stopping us looking past the action to the motivation behind it and see if there isn't something in that and examining our own actions to see if they are as moral as we'd like them to be.