Remembering the London Bombings

By Hugo Jenks, Islam Spokesman

I remember the morning of 7/7/2005.

It started uneventfully for me. I walked to my job at a small engineering company in Walton on Thames, greeted my colleagues, and settled down to my tasks for the day. A colleague then said there were explosions in London. As the picture clarified, it was then hard to concentrate on doing any work. It felt very close – I would go into London for sightseeing at weekends, and it was a shock to me. A shock to us all.Until that point I had not examined Islam at all, and had only vague memories of it being discussed in RE lessons at school. Suddenly it became significant, and it was necessary to find out more.

Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, spoke of Islam as a peaceful religion. That the Koran was beautiful, and that he kept a copy on his bedside table. And of course he said that this attack were nothing to do with the peaceful religion of Islam. I had never trusted Blair, and it seemed obvious to me (but unfortunately not obvious to everyone at that time) that whatever he said should be treated with extreme scepticism. My task then was apparent: I would have to read the Koran for myself and decide whether Blair was accurate or not regarding Islam.

I downloaded a copy, and set about reading it. Starting at the beginning, as I knew no better at that time. It took around five days of determined slog to get through it. It is tediously repetitive, it makes little sense in many places, and what sense it does make demonstrates its violence, lack of concern for non-believers, scientific absurdities, lack of modern concepts of morality or basic rights, inaccuracies when relating Biblical stories, and yet with one overwhelming theme: inducing a state of fear into believers regarding the threat of eternal punishment in Hell – that they risk falling into if they fail to do exactly what the Messenger of Allah tells them to do.

full blog at the link
https://www.forbritain.uk/2020/07/08/remembering-the-london-bombings/



0
0
0.000
0 comments