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Wednesday 4 July 2007

"Innocent people" - the never asked question

Inayat Bunglawala is the media secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain and as such is often interviewed by British media outlets at times such as this. Mr Bunglawala has a set phrase that he uses whenever he is asked for his opinion or that of the Qur’aan on acts of terrorism. This phrase is along the lines of "We condemn the killing of all innocent people wherever they are". This sounds nice and simple but the one follow-up question that is never asked is "are those people who don't pray to Allah five times a day and who don't follow the tenets of Islam, innocent?". We heard during the trial of the thwarted terrorist Jawad Akbar who planned to commit slaughter on the Ministry of Sound's dance floor "No one can turn around and say, 'Oh, they were innocent', those slags dancing around. Do you understand what I mean?" So in his view these were not innocent people, how about in the view of Inayat Bunglawala?

I see in The Guardian that Muhammad Abdul Bari, the MCB secretary general, used a similar form of words when he said "Those who seek to deliberately kill or maim innocent people are the enemies of us all. There is no cause whatsoever that could possibly justify such barbarity." Once again there is the use of the word innocent.

I am not saying that Muhammad Abdul Bari or Inayat Bunglawala are terrorists, I am not saying that they support terrorism within the UK; however I am saying that the question "in your view and in the word of the Qur’aan, what types of people are innocent and what types of people are not innocent?" should be asked of, and answered, by them.

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