A Moroccan blogger on the London bombs

Green [ie Islamic] Nazism

London was eviscerated this morning. People, on their way to work as they did every morning, have been murdered in the name of a green Nazism which divides the world into two quite distinct categories: super- and sub-humans. “Good” Muslims and the rest of the world. Those who know and those who do not wish to know that there is only one truth, that only their truth counts. Today, July 7 2005, I feel like shouting, like Guy Bedos, “Stop the world, I want to get off!” I watched the subdued appearance of a broken Tony Blair. On BBC World. And I have to acknowledge that I was touched. Really touched. It was well known that the United Kingdom would in turn be violated by bombs. Islamic fundamentalism is what it is and nothing else. There are the ideologists of hatred and those which who put that ideology into practice. Those who pass from Mein Kampf to ethnic cleansing. That is the source of my hardness towards Islamist discourse. And I believe that in order to counter them today, we need to resist them. Particularly in our societies. In our society.

Dozens of civilians killed, hundreds of wounded, and a world still more dangerous. I have almost always been highly critical of the political choices of 10 Downing Street. Tony Blair, who remains one of those rare politicians who actually practise politics, has disappointed me a lot in recent years. Not for his privileged ties with the United States, but because the current American president is the most pathetic in the history of the United States of America [relax, Jimmy Carter].

I have heard it said, all this Bloody Thursday, that the green terrorists attacked London because of its alignment with current American policy. That makes me sick. Because people can always be found who will seek to justify such acts. The war in Afghanistan, in Iraq, British anti-terrorist legislation are seen to justify the hatred of la nébuleuse [nebula, er, um, the rootless?] towards the United Kingdom. That is not just simplistic; it is sordid. Seeking to justify terrorism is morally unacceptable. It is a matter of principle for me. Even the Palestinian question, to which I am particularly sensitive, has never succeeded in making me yield on this point.

Now, it’s true that I’m angry with all those who yesterday took issue with Morocco because of its anti-terrorist legislation, its trials of proven radical Islamists, and who today, because of the quadruple attack in London, talk once again of security, the war on terrorism and tracking fundamentalist Islamists. That gives me an appalling feeling of impotence. It’s a nightmare. An injustice.

When we catch fundamentalists here, we get criticised at home and abroad in the name of the freedom of expression and human rights. Other side it is not similar any more… In recent months, the State Department would have us believe that it has changed strategy, issuing a kind of curious mea culpa for its previous policies in the Arab world. No more support for dictatorial regimes, let there be democracy. Once decreed, it had to be put into practice. And quickly.

This type of discourse always benefits the most extreme. And Morocco–which has chosen the way of the openness, democracy, equality between women and men–did not wait for Condoleezza Rice’s whining [pleurnicheries] to take this path. Fortunately for us. Because today in our country the forces of reaction–which extends from the extreme left to the extreme right–has been checked in its destructive momentum by a force which understood that it was necessary to give time time [donner du temps au temps: Mitterrand said this once, which is not necessarily a good sign]. That politics was not just a toy but the most precious resource for the future of a country [I don’t get this but suspect it’s a variant on the “democracy’s too valuable to let everyone get involved” refrain].

Not so long ago the Moroccan judicial authorities asked for the extradition of a dangerous Moroccan terrorist exiled in London. The British authorities have always refused to respond to Moroccan requests. I myself put the question to a member of Foreign Office [whose reputation in the UK is similar to that of the State Department in the US] and drew a blank. Evasive answers along the lines of there being no extradition agreement… London for decades sheltered radical Islamists on its soil. Among them many members of the Muslim Brotherhoods. In Scandinavia, roughly the same happened. With the exception of Finland undoubtedly for reasons related to Israel. They have been there for years. I hope that Europe, except for France and Spain which have understood this for a long time, will learn the lessons of London’s horror.

I also want Morocco not to lower its guard to this green poison, supported by its unnatural red ally and giving off a nauseous odour of blood and nihilism.