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Muslims Must Condemn Mumbai Attacks

Neil Richard Leslie | December 04, 2008

Condemndation of the Mumbai attacks has not been as vocal throughout the Muslim world as one might have hoped. Pakistanis have their priorities backwards states Thomas L. Friedman writing in the International Herald Tribune:

On Feb. 6, 2006, three Pakistanis died in Peshawar and Lahore during violent street protests against Danish cartoons that had satirized the Prophet Muhammad. More such mass protests followed weeks later. When Pakistanis and other Muslims are willing to take to the streets, even suffer death, to protest an insulting cartoon published in Denmark, is it fair to ask: Who in the Muslim world, who in Pakistan, is ready to take to the streets to protest the mass murders of real people, not cartoon characters, right next door in Mumbai?

After all, if 10 young Indians from a splinter wing of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party traveled by boat to Pakistan, shot up two hotels in Karachi and the central train station, killed at least 173 people, and then, for good measure, murdered the imam and his wife at a Saudi-financed mosque while they were cradling their 2-year-old son - purely because they were Sunni Muslims - where would we be today? The entire Muslim world would be aflame and in the streets.

It should be noted, however, that Pakistani officials were quick to express sympathy with India and denounce terrorism in all forms. Friedman continues:

But while the Pakistani government's sober response is important, and the sincere expressions of outrage by individual Pakistanis are critical, I am still hoping for more. I am still hoping - just once - for that mass demonstration of "ordinary people" against the Mumbai bombers, not for my sake, not for India's sake, but for Pakistan's sake.

Why? Because it takes a village. The best defense against this kind of murderous violence is to limit the pool of recruits, and the only way to do that is for the home society to isolate, condemn and denounce publicly and repeatedly the murderers - and not amplify, ignore, glorify, justify or "explain" their activities.

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