At least al-Shabab, the Somalian islamic fascist group, has finally admitted responsibility for carrying out a bomb attack on a plane that blew a great big hole in its fuselage. I try not to be a pedant, but is responsibility really the right word? How about claiming irresponsibility? I see nothing responsible about trying to murder innocent people.
The fanatics have, someone belatedly and farcically, claimed the attack was in revenge for Western intelligence operations in Somalia, whatever that means. Oh, that’s all right then. Attempt to carry out mass murder on ordinary people in order to extract retribution. Makes sense.
There were two aspects of good news that accompanied this story. One is that the suicide murderer failed to bring down the aircraft and the other is that the suicide murderer was himself blown out of the hole in the fuselage that he created.
To be fair, before he set off the bomb, he was probably in good spirits. His teachers and leaders will have promised him a lifetime of virgins in paradise. Boy, will he be surprised to find that he’s been conned? Billy Connolly explained far better than I ever could the sheer madness of suicide murderers when he pointed out the potential difficulties in having to explain the act of sex to countless virgins and the even more tricky part of carrying out sexual activities when you have bombed yourself into mince. I expect his tutors probably missed out that bit.
The murderer was also given some duff information by his comrades, setting off his bomb long before the plane had been fully pressurised. A schoolboy error which culminated in the only death being that of the incompetent suicide murder himself. At 37,000 feet the story would have been so much different but somehow al-Shabab didn’t properly research the matter.
I use the terms ‘islamic fascist’ and ‘suicide murderer’ instead of ‘islamic militant’ and ‘suicide bomber’ because I believe the media terms don’t capture sufficiently what these people are all about. Militant is not always a word associated with evil and bomber, whilst not exactly a glowing description, is less evocative a word than murderer. And they are fascists and murderers.
If I had the answer to the mess the world was in, I’d be a wealthy man, but islamic fascism is certainly one major reason. My answer is simple, probably simplistic, because I would argue that we need to move to a position where religion is shown up for what it really is. There is no evidence that any of the religious stories are anything other than made up by man. Politicians from Cameron on one side and Corbyn on the other are far too timid to grasp the subject, instead showing ‘respect’. There is no harm in allowing people to believe in things that aren’t true, like religion, the paranormal and all the rest of it, but we need to explain that without evidence none of these things stand up. Simple as.
This could take centuries, especially since some religions are still growing, despite or maybe even because of the lack of evidence and the irrationality of it all.
Fanatics like al-Shabab and the other 57 varieties of islamic fascists carry on merrily blowing us up in the name of god. Our job is to demonstrate that these gods aren’t for real and they are really blowing up themselves and others for nothing. With weak politicians doing the exact opposite, things are, I’m afraid, going to get much worse.
