Explosions at Brussels airport.

[OhYouBadBadKitten]

2 explosions. Airport being evacuated. All flights cancelled.
On bbc at the moment.

This is from Ayaan Hirsi Ali's article in WSJ (2015):

"As I see it, the fundamental problem is that the majority of otherwise peaceful and law-abiding Muslims are unwilling to acknowledge, much less to repudiate, the theological warrant for intolerance and violence embedded in their own religious texts. It simply will not do for Muslims to claim that their religion has been “hijacked” by extremists. The killers of Islamic State and Nigeria’s Boko Haram cite the same religious texts that every other Muslim in the world considers sacrosanct.
Instead of letting Islam off the hook with bland clichés about the religion of peace, we in the West need to challenge and debate the very substance of Islamic thought and practice. We need to hold Islam accountable for the acts of its most violent adherents and to demand that it reform or disavow the key beliefs that are used to justify those acts."

I think we all need to do this, and not just Muslims. Everyone.

"in PR terms it would be a good idea, to show the clear divide between moderate and extremists."

Yes I think so. As we all know Islamic State does not represent Islam but inconveniently it has been named after it, so some good P.R. might be useful.

fine.

I personally disavow kinship with the people who have done this.

I do not approve of murder.

I think violence is bad.

There, I fixed terrorism.

I am stopping now before anyone suggests anything worse.

My deepest sympathies to those whose lives are forever changed by this atrocity. This could so easily be any one of us.

Shit have had childrens to on only today and thank goodness although my near 3 year old wouldn't get it it's beyond distressing!

Those poor people :(

I think you're being a bit petulant there CrappyMummy and I think prominent Muslim leaders do have a role to play. And I'm sure a lot of them do, we just don't hear about it.

Real change comes from within. The best people to challenge those Islamists who look to the Quran to justify their violence are Islamic scholars who can argue for more peaceful interpretations.

The problem they have on their hands though is that the life of their founder was quite violent itself.

How about asking Nicky Morgan to include critical thinking into her education reforms?

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."

Or

The only thing necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.

I agree, OYBBK. I keep deleting drafts so as not to get sidetracked. But then I think, some of this needs to be said.

So no shouting, but here's something important.

There is a big difference between recognising something, and "apologising forever" or "doing collective guilt" for it.

I don't want every man who sits on my sofa to apologise for women not having had the vote and equal pay, or for violence committed by other men on other women.

But failing to recognise those things is also not acceptable.

And this applies to pretty much everything that's been discussed on this thread. From recognising the actions of the attackers in Brussels today, to recognising Britain's actions past and present, to recognising the actions of other countries and powers repeating throughout world history.

Because failure to acknowledge prevents us from understanding what's going on. And then we really are in the shit.

I am sick of hand-wringing platitudes after each mass slaughter by Islamic terrorists.

I am sick of the condolences, the flowers, the lighting of the Euffel Tower in the national colours of the latest country whose innocent citizens have been slaughtered by these barbaric criminalsi

I am sick of being told that "we will defeat terror" and Cameron's "we will not let the terrorists win" hollow rhetoric when the fact that 34 bodies are strewn across a European capital shows they have actually won

I don't want '3 days of condolences'. I want 3 days of surrounding these no-go areas that harbour these madmen and 3 days of kicking down doors and draining the chess pits.

I want to live in a country where I can wave my loved ones off to work without worrying whether they will be the unlucky ones that get slaughtered in the name of Allah

I want a country that puts the security of its citizens about the rights of stupid primitives misguided actions that think will please their imaginary friends

I don't really care how we achieve this any more

I am sick of it and we must make it stop. Now

What Pausing said.

No-one wants to see anyone apologising for anything. People want to see something akin to, "These aspects are inciting violence. Get rid of them. They are crap beliefs and the world has seen too many crap beliefs in its time".

Beautifully put, Pausing - and how depressing, on such a day, that instead of speaking about the cruelly murdered/injured, the priority for some appears to lie in quite another direction

On a personal level, once I''d finished crying, my thoughts turned to how I can prevent the slaughter of my own children.

by the way, where was the widespread demos by Norwegians and Norwegian expats around the world against breivik

40,000 person demo against Brevik in Norway.

Maybe they should just have sat at home sulking about how it wasn't their fault instead?

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/norway/9229308/Norwegians-stage-anti-Anders-Behring-Breivik-song-protest.html

"On a personal level, once I''d finished crying, my thoughts turned to how I can prevent the slaughter of my own children."

Oh please - sort yourself out!

I am sorting myself out - I've come on here - or is it stiff upper lip time?

i give up on this thread

I don't think some of you could give a toss about atrocities

It's either competitive sadding (I cried for 2 hours!) or a vehicle for attacking Muslims

The blame for today rests with those who perpetrated it. If you want to go broader, there are structural reasons we could probably discuss

It is definitely not the fault of some random Muslim in Dundee, or Salisbury.

I agree with springing.
Six months ago I probably wouldn't have.
For me everything changed after cologne.

'I want a country that puts the security of its citizens about the rights of stupid primitives misguided actions that think will please their imaginary friends'

You're right there Springing. Just crazy!

I wondered how long it would be before we had the 'you are not bothered about the victims, you just want to attack Muslims' post.

If ISIS/Al-quaeda stopped blowing innocent victims up, there would be no need for these threads.

As I said earlier, too many people deflecting blame or, worse, burying their head in the sand. It reminds me of kids putting their fingers in their ears and la la la-ing. If we close our eyes and hope for the best it will all go away.

Good post Springing. Surely the most pressing matter is to eradicate Isis and their followers. Closely followed by zero tolerance of any Muslim who puts religious belief before allegiance to the country in which they live, equal rights for women, gay people etc and full tolerance of other religious beliefs.

I've lived in France where you met my north African husband.
Part of the reason young men from Maghreb backgrounds become radicalised is because of the extreme racism in France and the fact a whole section of the society is marginalised and descriminated against.
I see it as no different to American loners opening fire in a shopping centre or school.
This is an issue that needs to be addressed and better secret service.
I don't think blaming all Muslims will help the issue at all.

At no point have I suggested burying anything in the sand

I have suggested that:
We stop selling arms to despots, and otherwise supporting their regimes

I would also point out that Muslims have protested against Isis, not that it matters to some here.

And as for deflecting blame, I have said multiple times that blame rests with those who carried out the acts. I would also add, with those who may have trained them, and gave them access to bomb making equipment

if you want to talk about deflecting blame, maybe question those posters who are trying to pin the blame on random Muslims in Brighton or Solihull or something.

I trolled myself today by reading the Guardian coverage. FFS five opinion pieces and an editorial dribbling about how really we should't react as the terrorists will win and we mustn't carry out a backlash against those poor Muslims (because, y'know every time there's an Islamist atrocity this past decade Europeans go mad burning mosques and raping and torturing and killing Muslims on the streets and need to be warned not to -OH WAIT IT ACTUALLY NEVER HAPPENS) and just a lot of wishy washy shite where the last people they care about are the actual victims. I swear they have some kind of boilerplate article where they just change the names.