There have been a few cases of prominent Muslim leaders condemning the killing of innocent people for the benefit of western media, only to turn around and tell fellow Muslims that non-Mulims are never innocent.
On this board, from Annie, in reference to 9/11 etc:
Annie Anthrax wrote on Oct 7
th, 2010 at 12:30pm:
A Muslim has to be respectful. Killing innocents and suicide bombings are both forbidden –if Muslims followed this we wouldn’t have had 9/11 or Bali and Israel wouldn’t have an excuse to bomb the sh!t out of the Palestinian children.
Followed by Abu with:
abu_rashid wrote on Oct 7
th, 2010 at 6:54pm:
Well this is a slightly different issue. As far as the American state deserving some of it's own medicine, nothing is more deserving than a taste of one's own medicine.
As for the individual civilians being the target of it, not really. But as voters in a democracy, they are in a sense responsible for the foreign policy of their governments which has led to the death and suffering of millions worldwide.
I realise that Annie may not be that familiar with Islamic law (in the same post she also said that rape is forbidden in Islam). However, Abu's posts made me wonder what Islam's approach to the concept of innocence is. Is it the same as in the modern world, or does it have subtly different meanings in Islam like so many other words?
It does sound like a very convenient way of waging war on modern democracy, by using it to avoid troublesome concepts like innocence.
Were the 9/11 victims 'in a sense' not innocent?
Are there any examples of collective punishment in the Koran that may shed light on this mentality?