His ground breaking and often controversial documentaries have been the template for an entire generation of reality drama, most keenly felt in Paul Greengrass’ work on “United 93.” Now Broomfield seems to have once again found a subject that will divide the public and tap into the collective zeitgeist of the moment.

His “Battle for Haditha” is the true story of a small engagement between a Marine patrol and two local men who have been paid 1000 dollars by al Qaeda to detonate an IED. The chaos that ensues after the explosion which kills a Marine Captain quickly develops into a massacre of the local population by the surviving Marines. In all 24 people died, but this is no crucifixion of the U.S. forces or a condemnation of the insurgents, but rather an even-sided account of one terrible day.

In fact, “Battle for Haditha” is an internal struggle of conscience for all concerned; Marines, civilians, and insurgents alike.

Broomfield develops a Truman Capote “true fiction” account of life in Iraq. His documentary style is present and correct but he is also adept at opening this canvas wider through his excellent use of music; most notably the thrash metal soundtrack which constantly accompanies the exhausted and bored Marines through their daily lives.

The young Marines are played by ex-servicemen which further ads to the personal tragedy of the film. Corporal Ramirez, our main focus, is devastating in an emotional scene where he breaks down shortly before the massacre takes place. It is all the more poignant because we know Elliot Ruiz has experienced this battle fatigue for real, he knows Ramirez because Ramirez is him and every other Marine.

Broomfield also picks up on the class and background of the young soldiers. Ramirez is from Philadelphia, “the murder capital of America” and has traded that place for “the murder capital of the world” as one Marine puts it. It is as if America has a ready trained multitude of urban warriors to send into 21st century war zones, and perhaps this is their government’s grand design: not to develop those inner-city projects so men will enlist and kill foreigners, rather than each other. “Battle” could well be a companion piece in this sense to the documentary “Rampage,” which featured a young soldier from Miami returning from Iraq to his equally violent American city.

However Broomfield’s film also dwells upon the local population. The bomb planters are small businessmen, one sells DVD porn to the very soldiers he will attack, and the other drinks alcohol and has to hide this fact from al Qaeda who pay them to attack the Americans. Perhaps the greatest irony is that al Qaeda pay them in dollars, thus funding a capitalist society they wish to eradicate, and using the very symbol they so despise.

The most gut-wrenching scene is where the initiators of the violence stand with an al Qaeda member watching the carnage unfold beneath them. They realise too late what they have unleashed on their own people, only for the al Qaeda representative to calmly explain how it will be used for propaganda. Later back with his family, one of the insurgents collapses in grief, the audience in no doubt of the hideous burden he has brought upon himself.

The massacre of the civilians is a stunning piece of film making. Their homes are attacked with military precision and it is that professionalism of arms which leaves the audience spellbound when seeing its effect on defenceless women and children. Once the Marine attack is finished we are lost for words but also at a loss for whom to blame.

The Marines are the obvious choice, bred on a diet of al Qaeda propaganda DVDs and pounding music, but then again is their leadership to blame for not allowing Ramirez to see a doctor when he was clearly suffering from post traumatic stress disorder? The insurgents planted the bomb but they were at the mercy of al Qaeda. Or were the civilians to blame as they did not reveal the IED to the authorities even though they saw it being planted?

“Battle for Haditha” is the first remarkable film about the unique situation in Iraq and it will take some beating, such is its emotional depth, and scope of its intelligence.

Further reading: “Battle for Haditha” premieres in Dubai.

Such non-militaristic strategies aimed at decreasing the potential for terrorism are of vital importance and can have enormously positive repercussions: Saudi Arabia is moderating its religious heads with a real hope that the rest of the devout population will follow. These kinds of models must be used in other nations as well in order to reinforce existing counter-terrorism strategies.

Social policies implemented to prevent terrorism from its core provide the only long-term solution to curb its threat. In an article published by the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Dr Andrew Silke, UN adviser and Director of Terrorism Studies at the University of East London, writes: “A remaining critical concern is that the current [UK] legislation is very poor in offering terrorists and their supporters a way out of extremism. There is no system to encourage terrorists to leave.”

Although it is vital that terrorists are stopped and brought to justice, there must also be rewards for their change in behaviour (assuming there is proof that they have denounced their past beliefs and actions).

Dr Silke adds: “Psychology has long known that it is much easier to change behaviour with rewards than with punishment. The UK though shows no sign of introducing a carrot to accompany the many sticks in its legislative approach, and this omission may yet prove costly.” Dr Silke mentions “Penititi Laws”, introduced in Italy in the 1980s, that cut prison sentences and granted early release for rehabilitated terrorists. This helped eradicate terrorism in the country.

By showing a criminal that he can benefit from both denouncing violent fundamentalism and from becoming more socially accepted, we have eliminated his reason to fight. But, meeting a criminal’s violence solely with state punishment only increases the offender’s rage and sense of social alienation, as well as his group’s perceived injustice. The Economist recently published an article on the Prison Entrepreneurship Programme in Texas. It states, “During the past four years PEP has put more than 300 inmates through four months of business classes and study…About 40 graduates already have businesses up and running. The vast majority are employed. Fewer than 5% have reofended.”

These kinds of effective methods can be applied to rehabilitate terrorist suspects as well. It is also essential to implement intelligent and personal methods to defeat terrorism at its very inception. Yehya Birt, a research fellow at the Islamic Foundation in Leicester, argues that the UK must be doing more in this respect as only a fraction of one percent of the annual counter-terrorism budget in 2007 was allocated to support “hearts and minds” strategies.

However, other counter-terrorism procedures are still vital. In August 2006, 8 British terrorists were arrested on their way to blowing up 7 transatlantic flights from London. Although surveillance was crucial in this instance, the problem with relying too heavily on intelligence gathering is that the penetration of terrorist cells is both limited and random at best.

To the UK’s credit, there are signs of progressive counter-terrorism methods that may also improve the efficiency of terrorist cell infiltration. Hassan Butt, a recently reformed ex-British facilitator for terrorist activity, appeared on BBC2’s Newsnight last month. He said that he is working to deradicalise Jihadis in urban areas of Manchester.

In this case, having a reformed terrorist deradicalising extremists is a highly effective tool: Butt has a working knowledge and understanding of Jihadi thought and propaganda, which he eventually denounced (what we want all would-be terrorists to do). There is an underlying risk that anyone charged with a terrorist crime could just claim to be rehabilitated and ask for special treatment. But, as Martin Bright mentioned in The New Statesman on the 3rd of April, UK terrorism laws may be an effective counter-balance to this problem.

Under the Terrorism Act 2006, ‘acts preparatory to terrorism’ is a new UK legal offence that makes it easier to charge suspects and prevent attacks. Bright argues that this is further facilitated by the introduction of ‘threshold charging’, which he says, “allows the police to bring a prosecution on the ‘realistic suspicion’ of terrorist activity, rather than the usual need for the reasonable prospect of conviction” – the latter being a more tenuous charge.

Appropriate and robust terrorism laws must be coupled with societal and individual-based deradicalisation efforts that centre on the reasons behind terrorism. Jihadis reiterate their concern for the suffering of Muslims in places such as Gaza and the West Bank, Iraq and Afghanistan. Further military operations that kill or injure civilians in these areas will only intensify an extremist’s sense of injustice towards Muslims, and create newly hardened Muslims from the moderate majority.

Terrorist organisations themselves use images aired on News channels that show Muslim civilians attacked or threatened by US, Coalition or Israeli troops. Individuals with certain psychological and aptitudinal profiles are more affected by these images and may be susceptible to recruitment by radical groups.

The Observer’s Jason Burke recently published an article about a Saudi programme to rehabilitate Jihadis. He wrote: “According to […] a psychologist working at the centre, many of the prisoners have very poor reasoning capacity and poor communication skills.” Burke also points out that the prisoners manifested emotional problems that were identified in order to alter their effect in a positive manner and diminish extremist thought and behaviour.

Methods that incorporate incentives, re-education and rehabilitation can eventually defeat terrorism and decrease the need for inflammatory militaristic methods. While progressive approaches must be applauded, a global emphasis on deradicalisation must take root and work alongside existing strategies.

Terrorism, in the long-run, cannot be defeated through the use of force alone; this would only add fuel to an already raging fire. Social, psychological and legal methods can eliminate the very cause of terrorism and reduce suffering and violence on a global scale.

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto is tragic. There can be no doubt about that. But what shocks me today, as I am shocked on a daily basis with the stream of murders and suicides in Pakistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey, and so many other countries is this nagging question: Where on earth do they find them?? Where on earth do the plotters and schemers find so many willing men and women of young age to mould into their insane vision of the world? How did those who planned this latest act of violence stumble upon this latest specimen of misguided fervour and convince him (at least it seems to be a him at the time of writing) to go and end his life by assassinating a mother of three children. How did they get through to this guy? And more importantly, why is it so goddamn easy to find self-terminating assassins in our region?

(To read this article in full, please visit GlobalComment)

Nick Broomfield’s “The Battle for Haditha” has not yet gotten enough press. In some ways, this is understandable. Despite the explosive subject matter, this is a low-key film. There are no big-name actors, no enormous budget, and, most importantly, the picture’s stylistic elements tend toward a stark, bare-boned simplicity. Nevertheless, this is a film to see.

Broomfield cast many amateurs for key roles, among them some ex-Marines and Iraqi refugees, and this is both good and bad. There is a definite air of authenticity surrounding the film, yet the acting occasionally appears forced. Some of the dialogue struck me as contrived- although this may have something to do with the subtitles. I do not speak Arabic, but having been accompanied by an Arabic speaker at the screening, I discovered that the subtitles are not as good as they could have been.

This movie is earnest, but, in some scenes, it also comes across as didactic. Do we really need to see the chief insurgent character, a disgruntled former member of the Iraqi army, spelling out the message with lines such as: “The Americans created the insurgency by dis-banding the army”? Does the chief insurgent furthermore have to opine stiffly on the future of Iraq, noting (in a manner that suggests that he is channeling Fukuyama) the bleak possibility of the country inheriting a new leader, someone who will be a helluva lot worse than Saddam?

Yet in spite of a few missteps, this is a haunting picture. I can’t get it out of my head, and I probably won’t for a long time. Broomfield captures the comings and goings of the residents of Haditha, people whose lives are about to be shattered, with intimacy and grace. I was floored by the character of Rashied (Duraid A. Ghaieb), a young man besotted with his pregnant wife (Yasmine Hanani – who attended the screening alongside the director, and ex-Marine actors Elliot Ruiz and Eric Mehalacopoulos), keenly aware of the growing danger of staying with his family in Haditha, and yet unable to do much about it.

Alongside U.S. Marines and Iraqi civilians, Broomfield dares to portray the members of the Iraqi insurgency as human beings. These people are not just fundamentalist foreigners, they are also ordinary locals who are infuriated with what has happened to their country. This simple truth is about as inconvenient as anything Al Gore can come up with, and is bound to make American audiences squirm in their seats.

At the Q & A afterwards, Broomfield pointed out that the massacre at Haditha has been extensively researched, and the script was an attempt to stick as faithfully as one could to real-life events. The movie was shot on location in Jordan, and grim anecdotes were related: apparently, one of the Iraqi families featured in the film wanted to pack up and leave in the middle of the shoot, highlighting the adversity of refugee life for the crew and the rest of the cast.

The audience, meanwhile, was happily irreverent. People expressed their anger with the U.S. occupation of Iraq with ease, blunt questions were asked, awkward pauses were observed, and the entire occasion had a fresh, unscripted feel one so rarely gets in similar settings in the States. Kudos to the festival organizers for this, honestly.

One woman asked if “The Battle for Haditha” would get past “censorship” in the States, a question which reminded me of misconceptions people hold about the U.S. film industry. In the U.S., the real censorship lies in trying to find a distributor for a potentially controversial film. The MPAA can cripple a movie’s chance at being distributed by issuing an NC-17 rating, but such ratings are usually tied to graphic representations of sex. “Battle for Haditha” has secured a U.S. distributor and will, hopefully, be seen by at least a fraction of the people who need to see it most: those among us who continue to defend the ongoing, blood-spattered mess that has been made of Iraq.

The best moments of the film have to do with the peculiar duality of wartime violence: how it is both personal and mediated, vicious and strangely, grotesquely casual. It is the antithesis to all life, and yet it can make its perpetrators feel alive. No amount of theorizing can ultimately reveal its true nature, and Broomfield understands this. Sometimes, all you need to do is watch.

A year ago, many across the world were shocked by news of bombs exploding in Jordan — a country seen as an oasis of stability in a volatile part of the world. We, Jordanians, were particularly pained and angered by the bombs that killed family members, friends and acquaintances. Although having watched the rest of the region and the world increasingly being targeted by terrorism, we simply did not think it would happen to us — or at least hoped it would not.

The feeble reaction, however, we Arabs and Muslims have expressed regarding terrorism in the region and the world, may have helped encourage an environment where terrorism is tolerated. If we are to presume that terrorists inflict fear and terror in the belief that they have support for their agenda (at least from some people, at some level), then every time we have been silent we have in fact encouraged terrorists.

Every time they killed in the name of Islam and spoke on behalf of Muslims, and we remained silent, watching the senseless killings, we acted as indirect supporters of their terror (and allowed them to usurp legitimate resistance struggles in the cases of Iraq, Palestine and Chechnya, for their own ends). Every time we stood silent as they killed innocent people and bombed civilian locations we added to their strength, handing them the bullets for their next attack. Our silence has been their ammunition.

When Chechen freedom fighters forced their way into a school over two years ago, holding hundreds of Russian children hostage, many in the Arab and Muslim worlds kept disturbingly silent. The Chechens have legitimate political grievances against Russia, but is Beslan excusable?

In another instance, in October 2004 in Baghdad, Iraqi children were killed by anti-occupation forces while being handed sweets by American soldiers. Thirty-five young people lost their lives that day. Few among us were even aware. Their death might have gone unnoticed to some, in the mess that Iraq has become. A year later, in identical circumstances, 27 people were killed, the majority, again, children. No outrage was expressed.

These are but a few examples of how apathetic we as Arabs and Muslims have become. And it is apathy, not cultural or religious backwardness and cruelty, as some in the US and Europe would claim. Decades of institutionalized social and political submission, as well as the West’s relationship with us, have led to genuine apathy; a belief that our voices are simply not heard nor valued.

Daily news of the killing of Palestinians and Iraqis, and the bombing of the Lebanese in the summer, has only increased this apathy. It is said that as a coping mechanism, the body becomes numb when faced with extreme pain. What we are going through mentally and emotionally could be the equivalent of this physical numbness — who, after all, can stomach watching the daily killings of Muslim and Christian Arabs, by the Israelis, by the Americans, and, as in Iraq, by our own?

Every day, scenes on TV screens and news in print media show death and destruction around us. In the case of Palestine, we have been witnessing killings, oppression and dispossession for decades now. To our east, Iraqis fall victim by the hundreds every day.

Yet feeling victimized only compounds apathy. Like oppressed people everywhere, we have come to view our values in reaction to, and in the context of, our political realities and the West’s treatment of and actions towards us. But values are sacred; they need to remain unchangeable, regardless of the context. Killing of innocent people is wrong and unacceptable. Period. Regardless of the injustice done to us, we should hold true to our values and our Muslim teachings of tolerance and non-violence towards civilians. And, above all, we should not allow ourselves to be apathetic to a breach of our values.

In some ways the Amman bombings might have created a small shift in unconscious support for or apathy towards terrorism; the very beginning of the end of this lack of awareness, in Jordan at least.

The tragic reality is that human beings, by nature, fail to act until the arrow has turned on them or their own. But we fail to realize that each time we are silent in the face of extreme wrongdoing, we are strengthening that arrow, until it takes its own course. Until it eventually aims at us as well.

These summer attacks, particularly those in London , have generated an unprecedented level of debate. If compared to 9/11, it is quite extraordinary how mature the reaction of the British Government and people has been. It is true that the scale of 9/11 cannot be compared to that of 7/7, but it is still amazing to consider the speed with which the majority of British journalists and commentators moved on to consider the underlying causes behind the carnage in London . Post 9/11, any attempt to review the causes was deemed almost sacrilegious. I still clearly remember the hysteria with which erstwhile considerate writers, such as Christopher Hitchens, attacked Noam Chomsky for daring to analyze what lay behind the crimes of Mohammad Atta and his band of mass murderers.

While I respect and salute the maturity of debate around these events, it is important not to overdo it. The simple truth that we must face is this: There can be no political rationale behind the insanity of the attacks of 7/7, Sharm El-Sheikh, Baghdad or anywhere else. These are not a reaction to the invasion of Iraq .

How can these attacks be linked in any way to Iraq when the so-called insurgency in the heart of that country is more focused on killing Iraqis than any other nationality? This is not a perfunctory point that we passively reflect on before moving on to consider the bigger picture. Let us just stop there. What kind of a ridiculous insurgency or revolution focuses on the killing of its own people? What kind of a movement is this that thinks it is worthwhile to kill scores of Iraqi children in order to kill one American soldier who was handing them sweets (as happened in Baghdad on July 13 th , 2005, when a suicide bomber intentionally rammed his vehicle into a large crowd of children, killing 27 people)? This is not a simple detail. Let us look at it again and again. This is the creed of Zarqawi, Bin Laden and others of their ilk. And don’t tell me that, for them, this is collateral damage! The suicide bomber headed straight into the children. These Arab and Muslim children were as much a target for Zarqawi as the US soldiers. All those who want to believe otherwise are deceiving themselves.

Similar obvious questions can be asked of the other acts of madness we have witnessed lately. One of the suicide bombers in Sharm Al-Sheikh intentionally and knowingly drove his car of death straight into a café serving hard working Egyptians, killing 17. That’s because of Iraq ? Or could it be Palestine ? What on earth could have driven the mad bomber to do this? Did he really think he would put pressure on Husni Mubarak by killing his fellow citizens?

The same applies to London . Londoners and other Britons staged the world’s greatest anti-war rally in the run-up to the Iraqi invasion. Anti-war opinion floods the daily newspapers and magazines. Why on earth, in such a country, did British suicide bombers decide to kill their fellow citizens on buses and trains? The naïve say that this is a strategy to influence the British people, so that they put pressure on their government to withdraw from Iraq . But let’s think about it. Imagine this British-born bomber on the tube, as he looks around and sees the fellow passengers he is about to kill or maim. Is he really thinking of justice for Iraqis at that particular moment? As he sees a mom or teenager going about her or his business, is he ecstatic with joy at the thought of bringing justice to Iraq by killing these commuters? Absolute nonsense.

Surely, if the bomber had one tiny brain cell, he would have realized that most of the people he was about to kill were vehemently opposed to the war on Iraq . If he had two brain cells, he would have asked the inevitable question: Who is actually dying in Iraq nowadays and why? Most of the civilian deaths caused in Iraq are the result of acts committed by the brothers in arms of the London bombers. Did these suicide bombers really think that such a bomb would change anything in Iraq ? If they were so passionate about stopping the war in Iraq , why didn’t they consider joining the Liberal Democrats? Did they not realize that there were also Muslims who would be killed? At which point did they lose their humanity?

Once again, let us pause there in order to understand. Before we get to the big picture, let us imagine these killers as they go about their grisly business. Let us analyze that moment to death. When we do pause and think, we realise that the big picture is actually as pathetic and outrageous as we all feared: It is beyond doubt that these killers were brainwashed by the Ben Ladens and Zarqawis of this world into believing a number of outright lies about Islam to be true. This ignominious list of Ladenesque lies that is sweeping the minds of non-thinking Muslims worldwide includes:

• Islam allows the killing of non-Muslims (if anyone disputes that this is what they are being told, please check one of the latest statements by Zarqawi in which he misquotes the Holy Koran and claims that non-Muslims should be killed wherever they can be found);

• The definition of non-Muslims includes the vast majority of Muslims who are not followers of the Zarqawi/Ben Laden brand of Islam. This explains why they don’t give a damn about killing Muslims. In fact, I am sure that for these bombers killing modern Muslims like myself and Shahara Islam (a victim of 7/7) is even more valuable than killing US or British soldiers;

• The Koran fully supports all these actions. One way or another, the brainwashers of the bombers must have constructed an interpretation of Islam that not only condones their actions, but absolutely supports them;
• The life of the Prophet Mohammed contains stories and incidents that support these types of actions. Al-Jazeera broadcast an interview a while back with one of the masterminds of 9/11, and he was saying that the Prophet had allowed the killing of civilians in a couple of incidents during his lifetime.

• The ultimate and greatest goal is to establish an Islamic Caliphate. We don’t need to look far in history to understand what type of Islamic super state they are looking to build. They want a replica of the Taliban’s Afghanistan . That living hell is, apparently, their idea of heaven on earth.

Only this could explain how these young men and women are brainwashed into wasting their and others’ lives. It is a massive misconstruction exercise, centred on the definition of Islam.

The ensuing conclusion is obvious: We Muslims are facing a battle for the soul of Islam. And the choice that faces us all is this: either we give way to the Islamic definitions used by Ben Laden and co, and the undying culture of misinterpretation of Islam, or we fight back to reclaim Islam. There needs to be a revolution of thought that would bring back our religion to its beautiful core.

It is not enough to go around repeating parrot-like that Islam is a religion of peace and these acts have nothing to do with it. We, the modern and true Muslims (if we are going to win this existential battle, we have to start getting a bit more self-confident!), need to re-conquer our religion and clutch it out of the choking grip of backwardness which had befallen it over the last few centuries. It is not just the wild misinterpretations of the terrorist masterminds. Even the mainstream application and interpretation of Islam, in the mosques and schools of the Arab and Muslim world, has gone off-track in various ways over the last few centuries. I am amazed at the smallness and pettiness of several of the Friday prayer sermons that I attend. The Islamic religion has been turned by the average preachers into a religion of fear, petty rituals, self-glorification, and outright xenophobia at times. The clerics focus almost all of their fiery rhetoric on hair-raising depictions of hell for alcohol drinkers and adulterers, wild theories on how the Muslims are victims of conspiracies by almost everyone else on earth, belittlement of Christianity and Judaism (not to mention Buddhism), and much worse. Even in the arts, to which the Islamic civilization contributed so much, the fundamentalists want to put the icing on the cake by decreeing that Islam prohibits all beautiful and spiritual disciplines such as music, film, painting …. Etc.

I remember attending a Friday prayer a year ago, in which the preacher decided to devote his entire speech to the issue of whether or not Muslim men are allowed to have sexual relations with their wives during the month of Ramadan. Is this subject worthy of an entire Friday sermon?

On another occasion, I attended the funeral service of the mother of a friend in Amman . The mosque was filled with the dignified sadness and piety of the relatives and friends of the deceased woman. Some of her friends and relatives, including some hapless Muslims who thought they were exercising their right to freedom of worship, decided not to enter the mosque for the funeral prayer. Suddenly, the preacher bust into an impromptu tirade against the “so-called Muslims” who did not attend his service. He started cursing them and praying to God that they rot in hell! He mocked the non-attendees for standing outside with the non-believers, i.e. Christians! I presume the preacher failed to see the irony of the current misinterpretation of Islam, whereby these Christians could not enter the mosque even if they wanted to.

Is such vengefulness part of the Islam that spread from a small town in the desert of Arabia to the four corners of the world? Is this the Islam of the Prophet Mohammad and his “sahhabah” (companions)? Is this the Islam of Omar Bin Khattab, the second ruler of Muslims after the Prophet and a man who would qualify for the title of history’s fairest and most just ruler? Bin Khattab, a friend of the prophet’s from the outset of the revelations, had an almost superhuman obsession with Justice. Every decision, every action was considered, reconsidered over and over again in the interest of Justice. He would roam the streets at night incognito to see whether the people were well-fed. He would castigate his lieutenants and province governors for the slightest mis-treatment of the people. He treated people of other faiths with extreme respect, famously refusing to pray in the main Church of Jerusalem upon the peaceful conquest of the City; he was worried that, if he prayed in the Church, Muslims would afterwards use that gesture as an excuse to turn it into a mosque. He also signed a treaty in which he assured all the inhabitants of Jerusalem that none of their churches or any other places of worship would be touched under Muslim rule, and providing a written guarantee of freedom of worship to all inhabitants of the city.

This is Islam. This is the Islam that truly conquered the hearts and minds of the world. If there are shameful episodes in our history, and each civilisation has its share of shame, then it is the deeds of Muslims and not the teachings of Islam. If our religion was as static and unforgiving as the current interpreters would have us believe, how could it have reached the hearts of millions and so quickly. It was Islam’s obsession with justice, fairness and equal rights that endeared it to the world in the Seventh century. And it is those same principles that we must use to save Islam today.

Compare the life of Mohammad and his companions with the Taliban, with their despicable destruction of Buddhist temples (compare that with Bin Khattab’s treatment of Christian monuments in Jerusalem, or even the Pyramids in Cairo; why didn’t the early Muslims lay the Pyramids to waste?), not to mention their systematic demolition of all facets of dignified life for those who had to endure their rule in Afghanistan for a few abhorrent years; compare it with Zarqawi’s stream of bombings targeting Shia mosques and institutions.

The lists are endless on both sides. On the one hand, the stories of the life of Mohammad and his companions are flooded with compassion and the pursuit of justice and equality. On the other hand, the stories of the systematic and wilful misconstruction of Islam by today’s terrorists and certain so-called “ulama” are as numerous as they are shameful.

It is surely time for us to reclaim our religion. It is time to re-connect Islam with its history. It is time to read Islam in context. The context is the life of the Prophet and those who were there at the outset of the Islamic revelation. The context is their actions in the time in which they lived. Omar Bin Abdul Azeez, another Muslim Caliph in the golden age of Islam, strove for the greatest standards of justice and equality a thousand years before the European enlightenment. It is the fact that he strove for such excellence in such an unlikely time and improbable setting that should give us, as Muslims today, room for sober reflection. It is the fact that the Prophet gave absolute equality in opportunities and dignity of life to both men and women during his time that should shame current preachers who would confine women to their homes and a life of servitude. It is the fact that the Prophet gave women rights of inheritance one thousand years before many European countries that we must dwell upon. This is how advanced and avant-garde Islam was. If Islam made the Prophet and his contemporaries aim so high then, how can we allow it to go so low today.

It is not about confining the text to its most rigid and mindless interpretation. It is how those texts were applied, and the spirit of that application, by those who understood them best, i.e. the Prophet, his companions and the early bearers of the message.

It is our historic responsibility to save Islam. Never before has our religion been under such a concerted attack. And the attackers are neither Bush nor Blair. The real blasphemy is spreading insidiously from within. With the forces of misinterpretation as powerful as they are, it is no easy task to devise a specific plan to reclaim our religion. But surely the first step is to speak out without fear. And today I wanted to join the increasing ranks of Muslims who have chosen to raise their voice in defence of a religion that is longing to reclaim its place as a beacon for graceful spirituality, justice, tolerance and equality.

But I’m not scared.

Today’s explosions in central London have first and foremost convinced me of the futility of terrorist activities. They may hurt, maim, and kill, but they won’t cow civilized people from around the world into submission. If anything, they are slowly beginning to prove just how useless their violent attacks ultimately are.

Today, I am recalling the attacks on America that occurred on September 11th, 2001. Despite the magnitude of those horrific events, despite the blood and the tears shed, we, for all intents and purposes, carried on (our subsequent actions in Iraq and elsewhere, however, have illustrated political opportunism in all its glory). London will carry on as well.

Having hooked myself up to a LiveJournal network of Londoners and other people interested in responding to and informing themselves about today’s events, I have witnessed acts of kindness, charity, and courage. People are rushing to give blood, to help house travelers stuck in London and not able to get home, to relay messages to loved ones abroad, and so on. My request to be on the lookout for my American friend was met with encouragement, well-wishing, and useful advice. Nobody is panicking, nobody is in hysterics. People are banding together and figuring out ways to help one another.

On a German website I read that a message from al-Qaeda was calling on Muslims “to rejoice.” Considering the fact that al-Jazeera is currently saying that a good number of Muslims may have been actually hurt and killed in the attacks, al-Qaeda’s latest stream of cowardly verbal diarrhea seems all the more asinine. These are the same people who think it’s perfectly Ok to take down innocent Muslim civilians in Iraq.

While I remain critical of certain American and British foreign policy decisions, these attacks have proved to me that kindness will find a way to survive, not just in places like London, but in the entire world.

The truth is, these attacks ultimately achieve nothing except satisfying the bloodlust of a few self-righteous monsters. They will not force people to bow down before their ridiculous ideology. If anything, they expose this ideology for what it is: a pastiche of utter rubbish, violent megalomania, and Quranic verses hijacked.

Way to go, Bin Laden & Co. You’ve just given the world one more reason to refuse to be dragged back to the Stone Age with your so-called “blessed operation.” With your filthy paws you can destroy people’s bodies, but, and here is a distinction you might appreciate, not their souls.

Do you know what degree of shame, abomination, misery and wretchedness is being heaped on the innocent and peace-following Muslims all over the world because of this so-called and self styled Jihad of yours?

Do you know how many innocent, unsullied people are being daily butchered as result of this professed Jihad of yours? How many children are being orphaned and women being widowed precisely for the same reason? And do you know, killing one faultless human being is like killing the entire humanity. You must definitely know that you will surely be held accountable for this all bloodshed. Will you, then, be able to face your God? I challenge, no!

Then, why have you become an agent of some hidden hand. Why are you taking the responsibility of the murder of entire humanity to yourself at his behest. Why are you dragging the Muslims down? Why are you demeaning Islam by presenting it as a terrorist religion? Acting like this, which religion are you rendering a great service to? Are you raising the standard of Islam high or you (if you reflect on it) are causing the heads of the followers of the path of the righteous bow down with shame in-front of the entire humanity.

Today most of the Muslims believe that you are not a true Muslim but planted by the enemies to destroy the image of Islam. For God’s sake, take recourse to sense, and announce a CEASEFIRE at once so the inhabitants of world may be introduced to that divine aspect of the Muslims at whose hands no soul suffer, whose words and actions bear no tinge of dichotomy, whose speech, when uttered, conveys to others the message of love and protection, whose thoughts, when thought, are devoted to the well being of others. Herein lies the true success, and herein lies the victory of the true religion of Allah.

I’m going to be very frank. Self-delusion and fear of the truth had eventually cost us too many beautiful lives on that grim Wednesday night. But unless we face the distressing facts, we should expect more terrible surprises. My patient editor always advises me that readers of Living Well magazine generally don’t expect to read about religion or politics – and to her dismay, I have since found it almost impossible to write anything not related to either facets of our lives. I think this escapist Jordanian phenomenon is symptomatic of our dangerous head-in-the-sand attitude. Very few people are actually willing to acknowledge that religion and politics are, whether we like it or not, deeply intermingled in dominating every single breath we take in every second of our existence in this plagued part of the world. Even fewer are those ready to confront the lethal outcome of mixing the two by illiterate dropouts who believe they hold, and can bestow upon others, the keys to paradise. Until our 11/9, that is.

The sleeping tragedy had been ticking all along like a time-bomb. For too long we have tolerated elements in our society whose poisonous ideology had been tirelessly feeding a destructive culture of hate and death to schoolchildren and adults alike. For too long we have refused to admit that the seeds of hatred have been sewn in the classrooms and in the mosques by disturbed clergymen who have been let loose on our society to drown it in oceans of twisted interpretations of an otherwise great, compassionate religion. This is why the chickens have come home to roost. For more than two years the Iraqi people have been subjected to a daily routine of arbitrary murder with their morning coffee in a continuous horror story that has no parallel in human history (the closest precedent I can recall in terms of the absolute randomness of civilians massacred by members of their own people masquerading as friends of God is the campaign of slaughter by the Algerian Islamists in the 1990’s). Meanwhile, here in Jordan, very loud voices applauded these crimes as some perverted form of resistance irritating the American occupation by severely punishing any kind of unavoidable co-existence with it by the destitute, war-ridden Iraqi people. One writer sitting comfortably in peaceful Amman went as far as openly glorifying the frequency of the suicide operations in Iraq which he said would deter the would-be Iraqi collaborators and “draw in blood clear red lines to prevent political softness”. Tucked safely away from the bloodshed, he eagerly compared the regularity of these suicide attacks to the number of daily prayers, calling for the “heat of Iraq” to catch fire elsewhere – completely ignoring the fact that almost all the victims of these attacks have been non-combatant Iraqi civilians going about their insufferable daily lives in search of bread to put on their tables (the same writer even titled one of his obscene articles commenting on the London bombings and the execution of the Egyptian ambassador to Baghdad with the offensive headline: “Let them go to Hell!”). Numerous other Islamist and secular figures continued their brazen endorsement of the indiscriminate carnage of Zarqawi’s Al-Qaida in Iraq and elsewhere until, of course, it spilled over to our dear capital city.

What do they have to say right now? Well, their tactical lip-service condemnation should not fool any of us. The leopards have not shed their skins so easily. They are simply too embarrassed to peek their heads out of their holes. But rest assured that they still incubate the same vicious beliefs that molded the likes of Zarqawi and graduated his army of suicidal maniacs (thank you, by the way, George and Tony, for removing the sewage lid and unleashing on our region the most uncontrollable vermin known to mankind). These usual champions of terror in Jordan were just too disappointed that no Israeli or American targets could be identified so they can brush aside the collateral damage to Jordanians and start to rationalize the attacks by explaining their patriotic causes and by placing in a political context what can only be discussed in the realm of insanity. But they were not given such a chance – although some Arab stations shamefully reported that the hotels attacked were frequented by Israelis, a sinister linkage more disgraceful than the attacks themselves. Now listen to what these otherwise Al-Qaida sympathizers are saying today. The concentration in their discourse is on the fact that almost all those who were wiped out in the attacks were Muslims. Somehow for them, this is the element that makes these acts so repugnant. If the wedding that was literally crashed happened to be a Christian wedding attended by a few infidel westerners, I dare to guess, then the moral outrage would have been much milder, would it not? Do you see with me that the problem is still here with us? There are simply no clear moral lines that are strictly drawn against the taking of the innocent human life. It all depends on whose God the victims worshipped. This is the root of the disguised sickness secretly slipping through our back door and engulfing us these days.

To truly uproot these murderers and shut down the arenas of their indirect collaborators, we have to uproot their uncompromising dogma and hold accountable their spokespeople who are roaming freely in our midst, openly preaching hatred and death. It is not enough to say that the real Islam is innocent of their alien creed. We need to begin ourselves an enormous undertaking to re-interpret Islam and purify it from the tons of literature that cannot be reconciled with our tired cliché that it is in fact a religion of peace. This will not be an easy task against the crushing weight of the mountains of ignorance that has enveloped the minds of Muslims over the centuries. But it is a war that needs to be fought or we will all pay a dear price. So let the first battlegrounds be the blood-stained rubble of the Hyatt, the Radisson and the Days Inn, and let us not relent in this sacred fight. We owe it in loving memory to all those who were abruptly taken away from us on that day by the disciples of the devil. Indeed, let us recall their names and their smiles at every occasion. Let us build a monument to imprint their faces in our collective memory. Let them stare us in the face at every street and ever corner. For it is only us who can make their lives so invaluable and their loss so immeasurable. Our sons and daughters, our mothers and fathers, our sisters and brothers, our husbands and wives were violated by cowards who put no value on human life and whose mentors are still bombarding us with their evil sect of death. Our counter onslaught should be no less vocal and our tools no less sophisticated. We should never forgive and we should never forget.

The great writer, the late Arthur Koestler – to whose work I have been belatedly but gratefully introduced – once wrote that “[t]he continuous disasters in man’s history are mainly due to his excessive capacity and urge to become identified with a tribe, nation, church or cause, and to espouse its credo uncritically and enthusiastically, even if its tenets are contrary to reason, devoid of self-interest and detrimental to the claims of self-preservation. We are thus driven to the unfashionable conclusion that the trouble with our species is not an excess of aggression, but an excess capacity for fanatical devotion”.

Indeed, such purposeless devotion reached new levels of cruelty and pointlessness when it was channeled to senselessly wipe out as many lives as possible in the heart of Amman. Everyone will remember where they were the moment they heard of the attacks. I happened to be driving in Amman when I got a phone call from my mother asking me to stay away from the Radisson because a bomb seems to have gone off there moments ago. It was as if I heard the advice the other way round. A few seconds later I found myself parked between the Radisson and the Hyatt, watching the tragedy unfold before my eyes. Amman felt so foreign to me that night. What we saw on TV in Iraq, Palestine and other unfortunate but seemingly remote locations, came home. The chilling brutality of death paid us a painful visit that evening and left a bitter aftertaste. Later on that night, destiny led me to be present with friends in one of the hospitals to assist the husband of Reema Akkad who had just arrived in Amman from Lebanon only to head straight to the hospital to search for his wife. The period of time between frantically checking the names of patients who survived and finally visiting the morgue on the fourth floor to realize that his two kids will never see their mother again were the longest and most heartbreaking in anyone’s life. Witnessing the apocalyptic situation outside the operation rooms, the multitude of similar moments of reckoning for my fellow Jordanians was overwhelming. I wished that every cold-hearted sympathizer with these murderers could be dragged to all the hospitals to look in the faces of those who lost loved ones. Standing speechless in the middle of that disturbing, turbulent sea of emotions, I realized that each single murdered soul is an unspeakable calamity in itself. It dawned on me that whether it is in Amman, Baghdad, Jenin, Tel Aviv, Riyadh, Gaza, Sharm El Sheikh, London, Casablanca, Madrid, Bali, Istanbul, New York or anywhere else, for every human casualty there is always an inconsolable family who is as human as all of us and whose lives will never be the same again because some demented individual thought that his God is better than theirs.

In the aftermath discussions that gripped a somber Amman, I heard people talking about how the blessed survivors who closely got away were meant to live. I would respectfully add that all the victims were also meant to live. Mus’ab Khorma was meant to live. Mustapha Akkad was meant to live. His daughter too was meant to live. For Almighty God’s sake, we are all meant to live. The only ones who are not meant to breathe our same air are those who take pleasure in these atrocities, justify them, explain them and bring them to our streets and hotels. Indeed, we shall never forgive and we shall never forget.

What a shame, for the comrades.

Here is an example of the unfortunate consequences when such an unnatural marriage takes place.

A venerable Lebanese writer and political activist who often appears on Arab satellite stations is as secular as they come. However, she also chose to become a columnist for “Assabeel.” Her choice of newspaper is symbolic of this unholy alliance.

Assabeel, the voice of Jordan ‘s Islamist movement, is also the unabashed official spokesperson of Al-Qaida in Jordan , on whose pages Osama Bin Laden is sometimes seriously compared to the four Caliphs and even blasphemously praised with the phrase “radiya Allah anhu” by some of its columnists, a traditional reverence reserved for the companions of Prophet Muhammad.

In her last week’s column, this Lebanese writer made an impassioned plea for the release of the two French journalists in Iraq whom she knew personally and whom she described as being more actively dedicated pro-Arabs than the Arabs themselves.

The kidnappers, the Islamic Army of Iraq (you can call yourself the Islamic Starship Enterprise if you wish and get away with it in the current bazaar of masked kidnapping gangs in Iraq) are nothing but a bunch of barbaric throat-slashing thugs with a camcorder, despite their sick joke about the welfare of Muslim schoolgirls in Western Europe. As comic as it sounds, these imbeciles in war-ravaged Iraq want to interfere in the French education system and impose on French schools what and what not to wear.
This is not an Austin Powers hilarious twist; this tragicomedy is real life. And our secular columnist – whose heart is in the right place but her pen obviously isn’t – wanted to appeal to these deranged criminals through their ideological twin and main voice in Jordan, “Assabeel.”

In one heartfelt line, she asks, “why France , the country that defended us more than we defended ourselves”?

To be fair, her Islamist co-writers in Assabeel, along with many Islamist figures in the Arab world who have been hitherto silent on other murders and decapitations, also made an exception and pleaded for the life of the French journalists – not for any sanctity they espouse for innocent human lives, but purportedly because of the French government’s stance on the Iraq war.

So, are Spanish and Italian journalists fair game because of what Aznar and Berlusconi perpetrated? Did Enzo Baldoni, the Italian journalist who was also a Red Cross volunteer, deserve to be decapitated by this same group a few days ago? What about British Robert Fisk, God bless him, fearlessly exposing the travesties of this American fiasco war? If he is captured for his blue eyes and British passport, should the greatest and most prolific champion of the Arab cause in history be made to pay for the debauchery of Tony Blair?

Of course not, our secular writer would respond, all kidnappings and videotaped executions are atrocious.

Granted. So why on earth do you still ally yourself with Islamist ideologues who do not distinguish between the hills of Nablus and the mountains of Tora Bora?

Why do you associate your name with Islamist groups who insist on drawing a connection between the ruins of Jenin and the train wreckage of Madrid ?

Why do you write in a newspaper that reported the Bali bombing with a front page headline stating that Al Qaida has struck a blow to the prostitution center of South East Asia ?

Why do you ignore the unconditional comradeship and support given by the same newspaper in which you write to any gang of butchers, from Khobar to Casablanca , with the prefix “Islamic” stuffed before their name – despite this paper’s belated and implausible change of heart for the nationality of these two Frenchmen?

Many Islamist apologists would claim that Islamist moderate factions do not support the kidnapping festival in Iraq , and would argue that it is unfair to lump all Islamists, moderates and fundamentalists, together in one bag. But it is they who lump themselves together as such in one united front, most notably on the pages of Assabeel.

Indeed, how can a newspaper that until this day portrays the remnants of the Taliban as the true saviors of Afghanistan claim to harbor any moderate opinion?

How can a newspaper that openly glorifies Bin Laden and tacitly champions Abu Musab “head-chopper” Al-Zarqawi claim to be against these horrendous snuff movies?

Even if Assabeel now proclaims that it opposes this devilish slaughter, can we really believe them? Can the Ku Klux Klan Weekly Gazette pretend to be against lynching and cross-burning rallies, and expect readers to believe a word?
While the above publication is imaginary, in Jordan we have a real newspaper spreading a different venom under the name of Islam. It is a real shame that liberal and leftist icons can have anything to do with such an outlet for backward literature.

For example, these Islamists never uttered a word of condemnation of the recent blowing up of the two Russian civilian planes in the sky? Now, after the single most stupid and cowardly act in the history of all liberation movements, would the Islamist hypocrites bow their heads in shame for the siege of the Russian school? Far from it. They would probably issue a special edition about the Chechen mujahideen and the mythical glories of their Jordanian commanders, as they have done in numerous issues.

While it is natural for Arabs to be outraged by the murderous war waged by George W. Bush and his obedient servant Tony Blair, secular thinkers and writers need to draw clear lines of moral certitude in order not to stoop to the demented level of our enemies, and thus become no different than them.

Few people would disagree that the blame for the current mess and destruction in Iraq lies entirely and squarely at the doorsteps of the two war-mongering governments of the US and Britain , for it is they who irresponsibly opened the Pandora’s box of armed chaos in Iraq without having a clue on how to stop it or contain it.

However, none of this should ever make us lose track of who our real internal enemies are. For not in the wildest fantasies of Bush & Co. could they have imagined a more valuable gift than that provided on a golden platter by Osama Bin Laden and his ilk. Any party who shows sympathy to these eternal enemies of our nation are either willing accomplices, or worse, ignorant demagogues who do more damage.