USA: Firemen and Ahmadiyya Muslim imam express caution over killing of Osama Bin Laden

Bin Laden's adherents needed no such convincing that Pakistan's Ahmadis were not his teammates in terror; a jihadist attack on two Ahmadi mosques in Lahore in May, 2010 killed 84 innocents.

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | US Desk
Source/Credit: The Caqlgary Herald | Postmedia News
ByBy Allen Abel | Monday, May 2, 2011

WASHINGTON — Chastened by a decade of carnage, backlash and futile, flag-waving bravado, a firehouse and a mosque found few reasons to agree with President Barack Obama on Monday that the killing of Osama Bin Laden marked "a good day for America."

"In the sense that the one who was responsible for the mass murder of 9/11 has been brought to justice, yes, we celebrate that," the Pakistani imam of a suburban house of prayer told me. "Bin Laden is dead, that branch of al-Qaida is finished, the backbone has been broken.

"But nothing will change. Thousands of madrassahs are teaching hatred against the West, and many of them are right in European countries. You go to a madrassah in Southall, London, and you won't see any difference from a madrassah in Peshawar.


"The killing of one Osama will not make a difference unless you eliminate all the breeding grounds of the madrassahs, and it is 25 years too late for that."

This was Nassem Mahdi, the spiritual leader of the Baitur Rahman Mosque in the suburbs of Washington, and formerly a longtime resident of Ontario. It was under his direction that the largest Muslim prayer hall in North America was erected in the suburbs of Toronto, a record that was broken only when the Imam built an even larger shrine in Calgary.

"In Pakistan," he told me over milky tea, after midday Zuhr Salat prayers, "I was always amazed that, whatever happened anywhere in the world, people would say, 'Oh, it was the CIA.' Well, last night, it WAS the CIA."

Ten years ago, anxious to establish his Ahmadi sect in the North American mind as a loyal and peaceable branch of Islam, the Imam contacted Art Eggleton, the former minister of defence, on the day of the New York and Pentagon attacks and offered to muster 10,000 Muslims who were ready to donate blood. But Bin Laden's adherents needed no such convincing that Pakistan's Ahmadis were not his teammates in terror; a jihadist attack on two Ahmadi mosques in Lahore in May, 2010 killed 84 innocents.

A few miles closer to the Capitol, around the lunch table at the Hillandale fire hall, there was no fist-pumping Monday, no raucous, self-congratulatory chant of "U.S.A."

"Sure, you're after a certain amount of payback," a veteran firefighter named Chris Whitehead said. He had been at the Pentagon in the acrid, awful hours after American Airlines Flight 77 hit the northwest wall on 9/11. "You got an airplane with a load of kids on it and you slam it into a building, yeah, that sucks.

"But what does it say about us as a society that, basically, we assassinate somebody — OK, a bad guy — and THIS happens?"

Whitehead held up the front page of The Washington Post, which depicted jubilant throngs whooping in front of the White House.

"I heard that people in New York were actually climbing up and cheering on fire trucks," he said disdainfully.

"I'm sure you'd see the same thing in some countries if Obama got assassinated himself," said a younger firefighter named Russell Miles. Miles was studying sociology at the University of Maryland when the 9/11 attacks inspired him to a career of public service in the fire and rescue squad.

At their morning briefing following Bin Laden's termination, the unit had been warned of an elevated level of danger, but, as one man noted, "after 10 years of these alerts, it's not like we pay any attention to it."

"I was relieved that we got him," said Miles. "But at the same time, I'm not sure how much difference it's going to make."

"Yeah," said Whitehead. "There's probably already an ad in the classifieds for a Radical Terrorist Leader."

Everyone I spoke to agreed that another terrorist attack on American soil or American interests is as inevitable as spring rain.

"I'll probably have the FBI knocking on my door for saying this," Whitehead sighed, "but we talked in training about some scenarios that would be so easy to carry out. Like, four guys hijack a gasoline tanker truck, put it over the entrance to the Bethesda Metro station, open it up, and light a flare. How much sophisticated planning does that take?"

At Baitur Rahman, where banners and pamphlets advertise the communicants as "Muslims for Peace" and "Muslims for Loyalty," I met a man who had lived for a year as a "gentleman cadet" at a military college in the city of Abbotabad, where Osama Bin Laden luxuriously lived and summarily died.

"I think that most Americans have started to believe that at least this sect of Islam is not associated with a single drop of terror," Mukhtar Malhi said. "But there is one part of the Muslim world that believes that Islam can be spread with the sword. This is absolutely wrong, and a black spot on Islam, but still there will be problems, and America will have to fight against these extremists."

On a splendidly warm spring morning, at least the great inspirer of mass murder and encourager of suicide — from a safe distance — was finally and certifiably dead.

"I hope they wrapped his body in the American flag when they threw him in the water," one of the firefighters said.

"In your faith, where is Osama Bin laden today?" I asked the Ahmadis.

"It is very clear in the Holy Qur'an that any Muslim who kills even one innocent person, he will be in hell," Naseem Mahdi replied. "But we say that hell is temporary, not permanent. How could God punish someone for all eternity for something done during only a brief lifetime?

"To us, hell is a sort of purification of those souls who have not done their homework in this life. Ultimately, even he will enter paradise."

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