Death Toll In London Climbing Toward

Death Toll in London climbing toward 50

The death toll in the horrible London bombings seems headed toward 50 or higher as some severely wounded passengers have succumbed.

The driver of the double decker bus that was bombed has given his account.

All the Muslim governments condemned the bombings of London, including Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, along with Iran, as well as Turkey, and even Hamas and Hizbullah. Hamas has long foresworn violence against American and European targets, and has been holding talks with the UK, for which it has been condemned by the al-Qaeda-linked groups. Note that only at ArabicNews.com and the Chinese sites will the unadorned truth of these Arab and Muslim condemnations be reported in detail. The Financial Times mentioned it but then discussed a few negative individual responses in chat rooms, as though the Egyptian foreign minister was only as important as some guy in an internet cafe. All the Muslim governments are as vulnerable as London, and most of the Arab and Muslim capitals have been bombed by radical fundamentalists– Cairo, Damascus, Baghdad, Riyadh, Tehran, Jakarta, etc. Sometimes it has been the country’s second city, as with Casablanca or Istanbul.

Spain is sending its experts on radical Muslim terrorism to London to help with the investigation. Madrid’s train system was bombed by a Moroccan terrorist group in March of 2004.

AP reports,

‘ A senior U.S. counterterrorism official acknowledged Thursday that the Internet posting by al-Qaida in Europe was considered a “potentially very credible” claim, in part because the message appeared soon after the attacks and didn’t appeared rushed. But nobody was certain. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because investigations were ongoing. ‘

An MSNBC television translator maintained that there was “an error” in the quotation of one of the Quran verses in the statement posted to the Qal3ah website claiming credit for the bombing for a secret cell of Qaeda al-Jihad in Europe. I can’t figure out what Mr. Keryakes is talking about, and wish the report had been more specific.

The only obvious quotation from the Quran is at the end, where the statement says,

“God, may He be exalted, said, “If you aid God, God will aid you, and will plant your feet firmly.”

This is Quran 47:7, in transliteration: “Ya ayyuha alladhina amanu in tansuru Allaha yansurkum wayuthabbit aqdamakum.”

The last part of the verse is quoted in the text, and correctly quoted as far as I can see.

Anyway, I do not agree with Keryakes’ point to begin with. Muslims often misquote the Quran, as Kenneth Cragg once pointed out, just as Christians often do not quite get biblical verses right. Moreover, al-Qaeda types are often not clerics, indeed are engineers without a good liberal arts education.

In the “Doomsday Document” apparently authored by Muhammad Atta, the phrase “pious forebears” (al-salaf al-salih) is misspelled. The author used a “sad” or heavy “s” for salaf, which actually takes a light “s.” I was initially so shocked by this that I wondered if the document had been written by a non-Arab. But Egyptian scholars assured me that an Arab engineer could easily make such an error.