I wrote this just after the bombing in London. I was too pissed off and too sad for all concerned to concentrate on doing the other stuff I was working on. I may remove this, but for now here it is. As you can guess, it relates to the 'suicide' bombers who detonated their bombs amongst commuters during the rush hour. I had loads of questions going through my head, and I wrote it all down, as if I could ask the people who did such a terrible thing, why? None of it makes any sense to me. I really can't get my head around such madness. I have been a soldier myself, prepared in the event of a war, to take the lives of others myself, but this terrible event is a peculiar madness.
It always was.
Always will be.
Dear Martyr,
I hope by now, you have reached whatever heaven you were promised. I hope you now know the futility of your actions. Do you think the West quakes with fear at the thought of a few fanatics blowing themselves up, along with innocent bystanders? Did your education not include the fact that the British endured a sustained bombing campaign, during World War II, and 60,000 civilians were killed and 87,000 were seriously injured?
If Britain could survive the terrible slaughter of civilians inflicted by another group of fanatics during the Blitz, why do you think it cannot survive your hatred? You caused suffering and death amongst our people, and by that, I mean Christian and Muslim and Hindu and every other faith you can think of in this multi-racial and multi-denominational society we live in.
Why did you do this terrible, wasteful thing? Did you wish to die, to be thought of as a martyr for Allah? Is your God so weak, so ineffectual, that He needed you to take even one life away from the One Life that we all are. Do you imagine the host of virgins that await you in your heaven will flutter their eyelids and be in awe of you, and your stupidity? Will they swoon at how you stood like a cancer in the midst of your fellow humans on the tube train, or the bus, clutching your bag of explosives?
Will they ask you how you chose who to stand next to with your bag full of hate and blindness and contempt for the society that gave you an education and employment, and freedom to practice your religion? What will you say? Perhaps the man with the suitcase looked like he was more of a success in life than you so you wanted him to die? Maybe the woman with the morning paper tucked under her arm, looked like the kind of woman who would see you as the cowardly wretch you really are. So she died with you. Did you see those who stood by you as human beings? Did the thought cross your mind that each one of them, was in reality, yourself, but with a different face, a different scent, other skin and breath, but you, beyond the illusion of creed.
I pity you. I have contempt for your actions but pity for your delusions; suspicion at your willingness to die. What did your actions achieve? Nothing but pain for the relatives and victims. Is that what you wanted? To leave the world a worse place? You were sad, deluded fools, all of you, to think the virgins you were told await you in heaven will be impressed by how your bloody and tattered remains were hosed down a gutter someplace, in the aftermath of your lunacy?
When you meet your fifty virgins in heaven, if they have any sense, they will roll their sleeves up, lay their tassels to one side and kick you to death for eternity or until you realise you were wrong; a ridiculous concept, to die when you are already dead, but no more so than the idea that you are doing the work of Allah by using His name as a justification to murder; or that you can go to heaven by unleashing hell on Earth.
To die for your beliefs, is courageous; but to murder others for them is as far away from the sacred as you can get. You could have killed yourselves, and it would have been more effective. Certainly the world would have been a better place without your hatred, festering away in our midst.
You were like spiteful children who spit into the food, just because you have had your share and do not like what you tasted. You have not the courage of your convictions, to live and make the world a better place. Instead you left the world your venom as a legacy, too cowardly to live with the consequences of your protest.
The courage is shown by those you leave behind to pick up the pieces, rebuild lives and limbs and resurrect themselves.
Did you think of yourself as a mighty warrior, defending the name of Allah against the wickedness of the West? Is your God so weak that He needs to hide behind you while you fight for Him? Or are you committing the sin of arrogance by presuming you do His work.
Do you think the West wants to destroy the Islamic faith? Then why do you think the paramedics rushed into the aftermath of your bombs to save the lives of Jews, Christians and Muslims alike? Was it not you who killed those of the Islamic faith? Did you not do more to destroy the integrity of Islam than any individual or government in the West by using it as an excuse to kill and maim? Have you not given ammunition to those who would like to see the Islamic faith as the opium of the Godless; the excuse of the murderer; the cloak of the coward; the intellectual shackle of the stupid; the justification of the misogynist; the draught to fuel the glowing venomous pit of coals that are the hearts of the sociopaths who kill for the pleasure of feeling self righteous?
You are gone.
It is we, who remain to mourn for your victims, regardless of the name they give to their God, or the way in which they worship. You drag the name of Allah into the dirt with your dismembered corpse. It is for the living to redeem the Name of Allah. It is for the living to redeem the Name of Christ. It is for the living to redeem the Name of Jehovah. It is for the living to forgive in the Name of Brahma.
And it is for the living to know that we are closer to each other than we are to the name of any given to God; and it is for the living to know that anyone who kills in the name of God is doing so for a dark aspect of creation that lies within the heart of any murderer who needs a little justification to kill.
Your soul will survive, like that of your victims.
And your soul knows what you have done.
Of course, you may say, it is very brave of me to mock you in this manner, behind the cloak of anonymity, behind the name Geetan. Would I express the same sentiment if there was a pack of fanatical dogs braying outside my door? Who knows? Courage lies in the moment, not in the intention.
But my anonymity comes from nothing more than a desire to express my sorrow for those who died, including you, and my anger at your stupidity. Your anonymity, walking unsuspected through the tube station, caught on CCTV, amongst people who bore you no malice, while you blindly relinquished your humanity resulted in you, and them, dying for nothing.
If there is a heaven, and you are there, I hope those fifty virgins you were promised are still slapping you around the face when your parents, whose hearts you also broke, arrive there in due season and ask you, why?
