fbpx
Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

‘A Pile Of Bodies & Whimpering Children’

A kind of dawah of the deed comes to the Westgate Mall in Nairobi. From a harrowing report in The Spectator: The Belchers ducked down and hid under parked cars, from where they could see what was unfolding. An African nanny and a small Asian boy joined Simon under a Land Rover. Two men were […]

A kind of dawah of the deed comes to the Westgate Mall in Nairobi. From a harrowing report in The Spectator:

The Belchers ducked down and hid under parked cars, from where they could see what was unfolding. An African nanny and a small Asian boy joined Simon under a Land Rover. Two men were under the next vehicle, where Amanda crawled. Dozens of people, mostly women and children, screamed and ran to a corner, clambering over each other and cowering. The gunmen approached them and — standing feet away from the Belchers — one announced in Somali-accented but good English: ‘Bismillah al rahman al rahim. We have come to kill you Christians and Kenyans because you have been killing our women and children in Somalia. Any Muslims can go.’

‘I’m a Muslim!’ shouted one man with children. They were allowed to leave. Then the gunmen opened fire, using single shots and short bursts, taking their time, executing people one by one.

A man and a woman tried to run past one attacker. Simon recalls, ‘He shot them. Bam! Bam! They went down. That AK has a horrific noise. You hear the thud of bullets into flesh.’ They lobbed a grenade at the cowering crowd and there were more screams. Simon was spattered with shrapnel and a piece of it is still lodged in his liver. The crowd was now a pile of bodies and whimpering children.

Children. Douglas Murray adds:

I can see why politicians like David Cameron want to make sure that nobody blames Muslims as a whole for attacks like this. But telling the lie that such attacks have nothing whatsoever to do with Islam does no good at all. It lets the extremists off the hook and infuriates everybody else who end up wondering why the Prime Minister cannot see what everybody else can see.

As I have said often in response to this ‘noble lie’, the only way that Islam is going to get through its current problems is if followers of the religion realise that they have to actively confront the problem. Each provision of an opt-out and excuse delays the day when the religion properly confronts itself and makes the claims of the jihadis a wholly impermissible — instead of plausible and sometimes permissible — response to the religion in whose name they act.

 

 

Advertisement

Comments

Want to join the conversation?

Subscribe for as little as $5/mo to start commenting on Rod’s blog.

Join Now