Drive By Doctor

Links to Islamic terror come close to home:

QUEENSLAND Premier Peter Beattie says a second doctor is being interviewed after a Gold Coast doctor was detained in relation to the UK terror plot...

And it's leaving the usual lefties askance - two doctors in Australia arrested, six doctors out of eight people arrested for the London and Glasgow plots - how can this be?

They're not improverished or marginalised, indeed they're well-respected doctors, so what could make such men, subscribers to the Hippocratic principle of 'first, do no harm', want to cause death and destruction?

Well, they weren't touting for business, that's for sure.

Perhaps we should ask a jihadi (well, former jihadi):

How do Islamic radicals justify such terror in the name of their religion?

There isn't enough room to outline everything here, but the foundation of extremist reasoning rests upon a model of the world in which you are either a believer or an infidel.

Formal Islamic theology, unlike Christian theology, does not allow for the separation of state and religion: they are considered to be one and the same.

For centuries, the reasoning of Islamic jurists has set down rules of interaction between Dar ul-Islam (the Land of Islam) and Dar ul-Kufr (the Land of Unbelief) to cover almost every matter of trade, peace and war.

But what radicals and extremists do is to take this two steps further. Their first step has been to argue that, since there is no pure Islamic state, the whole world must be Dar ul-Kufr (The Land of Unbelief).

Step two: since Islam must declare war on unbelief, they have declared war upon the whole world.

Along with many of my former peers, I was taught by Pakistani and British radical preachers that this reclassification of the globe as a Land of War (Dar ul-Harb) allows any Muslim to destroy the sanctity of the five rights that every human is granted under Islam: life, wealth, land, mind and belief.

In Dar ul-Harb, anything goes, including the treachery and cowardice of attacking civilians.

The notion of a global battlefield has been a source of friction for Muslims living in Britain.

For decades, radicals have been exploiting the tensions between Islamic theology and the modern secular state - typically by starting debate with the question: "Are you British or Muslim?"

But the main reason why radicals have managed to increase their following is because most Muslim institutions in Britain just don't want to talk about theology.

They refuse to broach the difficult and often complex truth that Islam can be interpreted as condoning violence against the unbeliever - and instead repeat the mantra that Islam is peace and hope that all of this debate will go away.

Go, read the rest now.

-- Nora

UPDATE: Quote of the day regarding Dr Mohamed Haneef, the Gold Coast-based doctor arrested over alleged links to the 'Doctors of Death' terror plot comes from Royal Australasian College of Physicians cheif Executive Craig Patterson:

"What's scary ... about this, if these people are found to be guilty, is they are good quality doctors."

Hmm.

UPDATE II: If you can't get Chuck Norris to save the world, how about John Smeaton?