Sv: Massacres and dates

Mustafa Hussain (U of Roskilde, Denmark) mustafa.hussain at GET2NET.DK
Fri Mar 12 15:44:19 UTC 2004


Dear Celso Alvarez,
Your effort to make some sense out of insanity by
connecting days, dates and holy calenders does not make much sense to me.
Teorrorists are terrorists no matter what creed, faith or ideology they tend to be the custodian of.
Also empirically it does not makes much sense to relate the huge tragedy in Madrid with the Hijra calender. The whole Al-Qaeda oufit is of a Salafi and Wahabi indoctrination and for them Muharram is absolutely not a special holy month, as Ramadan is for all the Muslims. It is only a tiny Shia minority (about 10 percent of Muslims), who take Muharram as a special or sacred month. And they have been slained many a times by these insane gangs of terrorists (recently in Karbela, Iraq and Quetta in Pakistan).
My suggestion would be to let call a spade for a spade and let terrorism and religious identities be remained as two different domains of inquiry.
Best regards,
Mustafa Hussain
Copenhagen.
>
> Fra: Celso Alvarez Cáccamo <lxalvarz at UDC.ES>
> Dato: 2004/03/12 Fri AM 04:39:44 CET
> Til: CRITICS-L at NIC.SURFNET.NL
> Emne: Massacres and dates
>
> (Cross-posted)
>
> Dear all,
>
> Today's Madrid massacre (11 March 2004 AD) occured on day 20 Muharram 1425
> H (after Mohammed's hegira) in the Islamic religious calendar. Muharram is
> the sacred month for Islam after Ramadan, and one where fasting is also
> purifying, am I right?  Although the Spanish government still presents ETA
> as the main suspect (why don't they call it "atheist ETA"?), a violent
> "islamic" group (apparently responsible of the recent attacks in Turkey)
> has reivindicated the Madrid attacks in a London Arab-language newspaper.
> Does any one know whether the 20 Muharram date has any special significance
> in the history of Islam, particularly against Christianity?
>
> This made me think about September 11, 2001 AD, which corresponded to 23
> Jumaada al-Thaany 1422 H in the Islamic calendar, and about the state of
> high alert that the world lived one Christian year later, Sept. 11, 2002
> AD. Well, naively enough, this is the first time I thought that, if the
> 9/11 massacre was carried out by Islamic fundamentalist suicide killers,
> they would not follow the Gregorian Christian calendar for any actions
> "celebrating" the anniversary, but the Hijri calendar. The aniversary would
> be about 11 days earlier, on Sept. 1 2002 AD, if I'm not mistaken. That is,
> by the time people where on alert, flights were cancelled, police were
> deployed everywhere, etc., the "anniversary" had already taken place.
> Didn't the US' and other western secret services know this very simple fact
> in order to deactivate the paranoid discourse around the "anniversary"? Or
> am I going too far?
>
> The US-UK-Spain-etc. coalition invaded Iraq during a holy Muslim month.
> Going back to the Madrid attacks, a Hijri year ago (20 Muharram 1424 H) it
> was March 23, 2003, Sunday. US troops had already invaded Iraq, and they
> were 60 miles from Bagdad. Ten milion people all around the world were
> demonstrating against the war. Two years ago (20 Muharram 1423 H) the
> Foreign Ministers of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC)
> approved the Kuala Lumpur Declaration on International Terrorism, where
> they emphasized their defense of Palestine's rights. Probably these are
> just coincidences, as unfortunately anything noticeable in terms of massive
> violence happens practically every day of the year. But I keep wondering.
>
> Please correct me as much as you can. I know nothing about Islam, but
> unfortunately a lot about the current Spanish government.
>
> -celso
> Celso Alvarez Cáccamo
> lxalvarz at udc.es
>


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