Pakistan mosque bomb kills dozens

[Coventina]

Source: BBC

A bomb has exploded at a mosque in north-western Pakistan during Friday prayers, killing at least 38 people and wounding dozens more.

Police said a suicide bomber detonated explosives at the mosque in Upper Dir district, although some witnesses said the bomb was already in the building.

Nearby Swat Valley has been the scene of heavy fighting between the Pakistani military and Taliban militants.

Upper Dir has also been the scene of sporadic clashes between the two.

The bomb exploded at the mosque in the village of Hayagai Sharki, about 15km from the town of Upper Dir.

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8084851.stm

[Taverner]

1. Why would Muslims bomb their own mosque? This doesn't make sense...

[maxsolomon]

2. to terrorize the populace?

and show them the consequences of siding with the government vs. the taliban/allah?

makes sense to me - it happened in iraq all the time between sunni and shia.

[Taverner]

3. No - most of the mosque bombings were part of the civil war

Shias blew up Sunni mosques, and Sunnis blew up Shia mosques

[maxsolomon]

4. pakistan isn't in a civil war?

terror is a tactic intended illustrate the price of cooperation with the opposite side.

from apocalypse now:
" I've seen horrors...horrors that you've seen. But you have no right to call
me a murderer. You have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that...But
you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is
necessary to those who do not know what horror means.
Horror. Horror has a face...And you must make a friend of horror. Horror and
moral terrorare your friends. If they are not then they are enemies to be feared.
They are truly enemies. I remember when I was with Special Forces...Seems
a thousand centuries ago...We went into a camp to innoculate the children.
We left the camp after we had innoculated the children for Polio, and this old
man came running after us and he was crying. He couldn't see. We went
back there and they had come and hacked off every innoculated arm. There
they were in a pile...A pile of little arms. And I remember...I...I...I cried...
I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I
wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want
to forget. And then I realized...like I was shot...Like I was shot with a
diamond...a diamond bullet right through my forehead...And I thought:
My God...the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect,
genuine, complete, crystalline, pure. And then I realized they were
stronger than we. Because they could stand that these were not
monsters...These were men...trained cadres...these men who fought with
their hearts, who had families, who had children, who were filled with
love...but they had the strength...the strength...to do that. If I had ten
divisions of those men our troubles here would be over very quickly. You
have to have men who are moral...and at the same time who are able to
utilize their primordal instincts to kill without feeling...without passion...
without judgement...without judgement. Because it's judgement that
defeats us. "

[Xithras]

5. There's also a Sunni/Shia split in Pakistan, and a massive Sufi population.

The Taliban don't regard anyone other than ultra-fundamentalist Sunni's as "real" Muslims. Sufi's are often simply considered pagan.

[ohio2007]

6. Did the link say they did it or are you covering for a work accident in the basement?

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=460_1203395643

Break time over, back to work...but who suspected Ahmed is such a sore loser ?

[Igel]

7. Because it wasn't "their" mosque.

Some Muslims talk as though there is a single Islam. They buy their own PR.

There are multiple Islams. The Taliban say there's only one Islam, but don't buy their own PR--they know there are other things "out there" called Islam but have no respect for it, any more than some Xians have respect for some kinds of Xianity. Roeder, claiming to be a Xian, killed somebody who went to church and also presumably claimed to be Xian. Why should Muslims be any different at all in this kind of stupid, narrow-minded, supremacist thinking? In other words, some do, some don't.

When you hear that there's a "Muslim world", you known that you're being spun at at least 1k rpm.

In this case, there could be a variety of reasons for bombing the mosque. Perhaps there was somebody they wanted dead--the person interfered with them, said bad things about them, refused to let one of the fighters marry his daughter; the outcry over "collateral damage" is only important when you think it matters to the person you're screaming at, and the Taliban don't care all that much about the collateral damage they cause.

Perhaps that particular mosque was of the wrong "kind" of Islam--too tolerant, not of the right branch of Islam, or perhaps of a strain of militancy that runs counter to the bombers' strain.

Perhaps the bombers simply wanted to create chaos. There's this tendency to create chaos, condemn the powers-that-be for not being able to stop the chaos, and then take credit when you take over and stop the chaos you created.

Perhaps a lot of the attendees refused to pay the people tax that the Taliban had instituted--you must give up a son for the fight or be punished accordingly. (Sounds a lot like the devshirme, to be honest, but is common among Muslim governments with aspirations to caliphacy.) Or they had dared to actively not support the Taliban. I could go on, but why bother?

[ohio2007]

8. Pakistanis avenge mosque blast, attack Taliban ( cummuppance law vs sharia ? )

ISLAMABAD – Hundreds of Pakistanis banded together and attacked Taliban strongholds in a troubled northwestern region, killing 11 militants, to avenge a deadly suicide bombing at a local mosque, officials said Sunday.

The incident Saturday underscored a swing in the national mood toward a more anti-Taliban stance — a shift that comes as suicide attacks have surged and the military wages an offensive in the Swat Valley.

Some 400 villagers from the neighboring Upper Dir district, where a suicide bomber killed 33 worshippers at a mosque in the Haya Gai area on Friday, formed a militia and attacked five villages in the nearby Dhok Darra area, said Atif-ur-Rehman, the district coordination officer.The citizens' militia has occupied three of the villages since Saturday and is trying to push the Taliban out of the other two. Some 20 houses suspected of harboring Taliban were destroyed, he said.

At least 11 militants were killed, said the district police chief, Ejaz Ahmad.

The government has encouraged local citizens to set up militias, known as lashkars, to oust Taliban fighters."It is something very positive that tribesmen are standing against the militants. It will discourage the miscreants," Rehman said.

Ahmad said around 200 militants were putting up stiff resistance in their strongholds surrounded by the villagers. "We will send security forces, maybe artillery too, if the villagers ask for a reinforcement," he added.

snip

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090607/ap_on_re_as/as_pakistan