Am I A Terrorist?

[lovely me]

hi everyone!!!!

i would like to share with u this peot..

please read..and tell me what you think of it..

 

They call my people

blood thirsty terrorists

blowing up buildings and planes

with dynamite tied to their chests

killing civilians by the hundreds

-but am I a terrorist?

 

True, some of my people

of names similar to mine

do act violently in despair

when their human rights are stolen

when their suffering and plights are ignored

in the refugee camps of Sabra and Chatala.

- but am I a terrorist?

 

They are not living their faith

just acting on emotions and hate

full with the revenge for the oppressor

with little regard for innocent lives

they are just Muslim in name

-but am I a terrorist?

 

Islam, the religion of peace

teaches Muslims to respect life

"If anyone had killed one man

except in lieu of murder and mischief

it is as if he killed the whole mankind"

Same verse in Torah and Quran too

by the same God

-how could I be a terrorist?

 

Prophet Mohammad, Peace be upon him

was a mercy to mankind

he cared for the poor, elderly and sick

even if not from his faith

he stood in respect for a funeral procession of a Jew

he let a cat take a nap on his robe

not to disturb her, he cut his robe

He told Muslim armies not to hurt women and kids

sick and old, cut trees or kill animals just for fun

I love him so much

-how could I be a terrorist?

 

But why do they call us terrorists?

why not call the IRA, Red Army, Tamil Tigers

Militant Hindus or Serbians terrorists.

Why not call the militia

blowing up government buildings

and killing innocent civilians a terrorist

No, the term is reserved for Muslims

- and I am a Muslim.

 

We are the victims of terrorism

in Palestine, Kashmir, Bosnia and Kosova

by individuals and states

with knives, guns, tanks and rape

-who is a terrorist?

 

I remember Serb soldiers came to my house

they killed my father and my big brother too

I miss them so much.

They raped my mom and my sister too.

I loved them so much.

Then they burned my house, my books and toys too

- and they call us terrorists.

 

I got scared, and fled into the woods

joined a caravan going to the border

migrating from oppression to a land of peace and freedom

 

I have walked two days and climbed a mountain

I am hungry and thirsty, tired and sick

My legs are weak and my feet are bleeding

unable to walk anymore

- do I look like a terrorist?

 

I am not a terrorist

I am a Muslim

seeking love, peace and justice

My name is Mehmet Poturvic

I am a 6 year old from Kosova

Dear God, please help me and my people.

"You alone I worship, from you alone I seek help"

 

Shahid Athar

April 18, 1999

Presented at an interfaith conference on 4-18-99 on "Islam and Terrorism" at the Islamic Society of North America, Plainfield, Indiana.

[Modesty]

Oh, that last part made my eyes misty. Thanks Lovely_me

[Bambina]

Salam aleykoum ,mashaallah dis is a wonderful poem.A child can speak out about the prejudice of being a muslim.I wish dis poem was showed in schools so dat ppl can learn about Islam.

[Nur]

Its not their fault, People in the west are focused on their daily work, in the evenings they watch the evening news, they were told that the news is a reliable source of information, so they believe what they see to an extent (depending on their level of exposure to foreign travel and culture).

 

The news media spoon feeds the western mind and forms their perception of the world, some time hiding disasters, and at times orchestrating false alarm, to fit the designs of the Murdochs and Media moguls.

 

At one time in Germany, an entire ethnic group were targeted as traitors and many innocent lives wasted, then it was the Communist chase and Mc Carthyism, now enter the Bushladen era, ISLAM=TERROR is the daily dose that westerners are fed, ironically by a media closely related to Westerners with Jewish beckground, they are probably turning the table on Muslims whi they fear will jumb in bed with the Christians westerners, so the Westerners are acting like an enraged bull, and the Neocons are holding the red cloth in front of its eyes, that reads, Muslims=Terrorists.

 

So no wonder young American boys are dying in Iraq for three undeclared objectives of the Neocons:

 

1. Destruction of potential powerful enemy of Isreal ( IRAQ)

2. Securing Oil.

3. Covering up of its Palestinian Masaccres.

 

 

The real declared objectives for invading Iraq were:

 

1. Saddam have developed WMD, and can deliver within 45 days, according to Bush and Blair.

2. To Catch Bin Laden

 

None of the above two is realized, so that leaves one to wonder, why not out the Dictator back in his place?

 

If Saddam is accused killing people, The Coolition has caused the death of 65,000 innocent lives.

 

If what they wanted was Oil, Saddam has worked with them before, he is a team player.

 

 

Nur

[Nur]

Civilian Dead are a Trade-off in Nato's War of Barbarity

 

The killing of innocent Afghans by US bombs is the result of a calculation, not just a mistake. And it is fuelling resistance

 

 

 

By Seumas Milne

 

October 18, 2008 " -- -"The Guardia" -- Thursday October 16 2008 -- While the eyes of the western world have been fixed on the global financial crisis, the military campaign that launched the war on terror has been spinning out of control. Seven years after the US and Britain began their onslaught on Afghanistan to oust the Taliban and capture Osama bin Laden, the Taliban surround the capital, al-Qaida is flourishing in Pakistan and the war's sponsors have publicly fallen out about whether it has already been lost.

 

As the US joint chiefs of staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen concedes that the country is locked into a "downward spiral" of corruption, lawlessness and insurgency, Britain's ambassador in Kabul, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, is quoted in a leaked briefing as declaring that "American strategy is destined to fail". The same diplomat who told us last year that British forces would be in Afghanistan for decades now believes foreign troops are "part of the problem, not the solution".

 

The British commander Brigadier Mark Carleton-Smith was last week even blunter. "We're not going to win this war," he said, adding that if the Taliban were prepared to "talk about a political settlement", that was "precisely the sort of progress that concludes insurgencies like this". The double-barrelled duo were duly slapped down by US defence secretary Robert Gates for defeatism. But even Gates now publicly backs talks with the Taliban, which are in fact already taking place under Saudi sponsorship.

 

This is the conflict western politicians and media continue to urge their reluctant populations to support as a war for civilisation. In reality, it is a war of barbarity, whose contempt for the value of Afghan life has fuelled the very resistance that western military and political leaders are now unable to contain.

 

In this year alone, for every occupation soldier killed, at least three Afghan civilians have died at the hands of occupation forces. They include the 95 people, 60 of them children, killed by a US air assault in Azizabad in August; the 47 wedding guests dismembered by US bombardment in Nangarhar in July - US forces have a particular habit of attacking weddings; and the four women and children killed in a British rocket barrage six weeks ago in Sangin.

 

By far the most comprehensive research into Afghan casualties over the past seven years has been carried out by Marc Herold, a US professor at the University of New Hampshire. In his latest findings, Herold estimates that the number of civilians directly killed by the US and other Nato forces since 2006, up to 3,273, is already higher than the toll exacted by the devastating three-month bombardment that ousted the Taliban regime in 2001. And over the past year civilian deaths at the hands of Nato forces have tripled, despite changes in rules of engagement.

 

But most telling is the political and military calculation that underlies the Afghan civilian bloodletting. "Close air support" bomb attacks called in by ground forces - which rose from 176 in 2005 to 2,926 in 2007 and are now the US tactic of choice - are between four and 10 times as deadly for Afghan civilians as ground attacks, the figures show, and air strikes now account for 80% of those killed by the occupation forces.

 

But while 242 US and Nato ground troops have died in the war with the Taliban this year, not a single pilot has been killed in action. The trade-off could not be clearer. With troops thin on the ground and the US military up to their necks in Iraq and elsewhere, US and Nato reliance on air attacks minimises their own casualties while guaranteeing that Afghan civilians will die in far larger numbers.

 

It is that equation that makes a nonsense of US and British claims that their civilian victims are accidental "collateral damage", while the Taliban's use of roadside bombs, suicide attacks and classic guerrilla operations from civilian areas are a sign of their moral depravity. In real life, the escalating civilian death toll is not a mistake, but the result of a clear decision to put the lives of occupation troops before civilians; westerners before Afghans.

 

Dependence on air power is also a reflection of US imperial overstretch and the reluctance of Nato states to put more boots on the ground. But however much the nominal Afghan president Hamid Karzai rails against Nato's recklessness with Afghan blood, the indiscriminate air war carries on regardless. Given that the US government spent 10 times more on every sea otter affected by the Exxon Valdez oil spill than it does in "condolence payments" to Afghans for the killing of a family member, perhaps that shouldn't come as a surprise.

 

But nor should it be that the occupation's cruelty is a recruiting sergeant for the Taliban. As Aga Lalai, who lost both grandparents, his wife, father, three brothers and four sisters in a US bombing in Helmand last summer, put it: "So long as there is just one 40-day-old boy remaining alive, Afghans will fight against the people who do this to us."

 

That doesn't just go for Afghanistan. Gordon Brown recently told British troops in Helmand: "What you are doing here prevents terrorism coming to the streets of Britain." The opposite is the case. The occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq - and the atrocities carried out against their people - are a crucial motivation for those planning terror attacks in Britain, as case after case has shown. Now the US is launching attacks inside Pakistan, the risks of further terror and destabilisation can only grow.

 

Senior Pakistani officials are convinced Nato is preparing to throw in the towel in Afghanistan. Both Bush and the two US presidential candidates are committed to an Iraq-style surge, though the number of troops being talked about cannot possibly make a decisive difference to the conflict - and in Barack Obama's case may be as much about providing political cover for his plans for Iraq. But the strategic importance of Afghanistan doesn't suggest any early US withdrawal: more likely an attempt to co-opt sections of the Taliban as part of a messy and protracted attempt to rearrange the occupation.

 

It will fail. The US and its allies cannot pacify Afghanistan nor seal the border with the Taliban's Pakistani sanctuary. Eventually there is bound to be some sort of negotiated withdrawal as part of a wider regional and domestic settlement. But many thousands of Afghans - as well as occupying troops - look certain to be sacrificed in the meantime.

 

s.milne@guardian.co.uk

 

This article appeared in the Guardian on Thursday October 16 2008 on p29 of the Comment & debate section. It was last updated at 00.11 on October 16 2008.

 

© Guardian News and Media Limited 2008