DAR AL HARB/ISLAM - THAILAND: MSM'S, MOSLEM TERROR AND SCHOOLS BEING LEGITIMATE TARGETS FOR MOSLEM TERROR ATTACKS

FT: SCHOOLS ARE LEGITIMATE TERRORIST TARGETS
by Judith Apter Klinghoffer

Sometimes I believe I live in the world of Alice in Wonderland. Today's Financial Times Amy Kazmin writes an article entitled Thai Islamic insurgency escalates. I would think that escalation would mean that terrorist moved from targeting soldiers, policemen or other public officials to targeting civilians or worse of all, women and children. For Ms. Kazmin attacking schools, i.e., buildings, teachers, librarians and perhaps even students is legitimate because they are symbols of the state:

Rebel attacks once mainly targeted government officials and symbols of the state, such as schools. But targets now include any member of the area's ethnic Thai Buddhist minority and Muslims perceived as hostile to the separatist cause. With the state still unable to provide basic security, analysts also fret about the danger of unrestrained sectarian conflict between Muslim and Buddhist residents of the region.

With such MSM ideological support, it is a small wonder that Islamist terrorists adopted a strategy of attacking schools. Not only are they not condemned for such attacks but central governments are held responsible for their failure to "to provide basic security" to an area. Sophistry employed to justify Palestinian transgressions and later Iraqi ones have led MSM to provide an ideological cover for murderers of young Buddhist teachers lacking appropriate connections to avoid assignment in the dangerous Muslim south where Ms. Kazmin says they serve as symbols of the state.

Time and again, MSM self righteously argues that the war on terror should not be fought exclusively with military means. The truth is that it is MSM ideological shilling for the Islamists which enables them to recruit young idealists. Instead of holding terrorists feet to the fire, MSM does everything in its power to present them as brave warriors employing legitimate, if necessarily brutal force to overcome Fascist states.

The fact that Thailand is ruled by a Muslim general who overthrew an elected government partially in order to appease his Southern coreligionists means nothing to the like of Ms. Kazmin or her fellow members of the international elite which includes HRW experts. Nor does the fact that his appeasement efforts led to what appeasement invariably leads to, an escalation in the fighting. They argue that the Thai government did not do enough appeasing. As far as MSM is concerned the governments are always to blame; terrorists never.

Since then, the military-installed government has publicly apologized to southern Muslims for past state abuses, pledged to pursue a policy of reconciliation and negotiations and tried to strengthen the capacity of state agencies dealing with the conflict.

But Sunai Phasuk, a researcher for Human Rights Watch, said the government had "failed to translate his promises and policy guidelines into an operational strategy, so troops on the ground can understand and follow policy shifts". In the meantime, he said, "violence is spinning out of control", while authorities struggle to identify potential negotiating partners.

Although the rebels remain highly secretive and have no public voice articulating their aims, recent propaganda fliers left at the scene of attacks describe a religious struggle to liberate an Islamic land from "infidel" invaders and occupiers. Researchers believe that about two-thirds of the villages in the southern provinces have some residents actively involved in the insurgency.

There is a public voice, it is a Salafist one which wishes to have all lands once ruled by Muslims go back to Muslim hands. Apologies are useless without an agreement by the government to turn Southern Thailand into another Hamastan for eventual unification within a rejuvenated Khilafah. Note Graham Lees report on "Growing Links Seen Among Southeast Asian Islamists; Southern Thailand Affected."

Thus, while the intellectual elite believes it is working to avert war, its operating paradigm makes a military solution to Islamism the only viable option.
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Pertinent Links:

1) FT: SCHOOLS ARE LEGITIMATE TERRORIST TARGETS