Wouldn't It Be Loverly?

You can either believe Matthew Parris, who seems to think that suicide bombing is just not chic anymore:

COULD THE RESORT to the suicide bomb in European cities be just another craze? Could it pass? Might there be an element of fashion — a grisly sort of terrorist-chic — about the tactic? I think so. We could one day look back on the era of al-Qaeda and the suicide bomb as we now look back on the Bader-Meinhoff gang and the Red Brigades in West Germany, student riots or the wave of aeroplane hijackings in the 1970s: cults and practices which at the time we thought might dominate the decades ahead, but which in the event never did. They fizzled out.
So will this, if we keep our nerve. Keeping our nerve does not mean, as Messrs Bush and Blair exhort, girding ourselves for war against the forces of darkness. That glorifies our enemies (and Messrs Bush and Blair). The war is not against evil but against silliness. The bombers are not evildoers inhabited by Satan; they are poor fools inhabited by superstition. They are credulous muppets. They are pathetic.

(emphasis mine)

Or you can believe Muhammad and what is said in the Koran--and since that is what is believed and accepted by the Muslims of the world, including all known terrorists, we should probably pay attention:(hat tip: Gates of Vienna)

The Quran is the ultimate source for later legal opinions. It is considered completely reliable and inerrant. What does it say about jihad?

What is the purpose or goal of jihad?

A complicated policy like jihad can have multiple goals or purposes, but this one comes late in Muhammad’s life in Medina and best summarizes the goal and purposes. He wants to make Islam prevail over every religion.

The following translation is approved and funded by the Saudi Royal family; the parenthetical explanations are inserted by the translators:

9:33 It is He Who has sent His Messenger (Muhammad) with guidance and the religion of truth, to make it superior over all religions, though the Mushrikûn (polytheists, pagans, idolaters, disbelievers in the Oneness of Allah) hate (it). (Hilali and Khan, The Noble Qur’an, Riyadh: Darussalam, 1996, 2002; parenthetical notes are theirs)

This verse is repeated two more times, word for word, in Suras 61:9 and 48:28. Muhammad means business.

Seekers and the curious about Islam must understand this brute fact as they read the Quran: in the ten years that Muhammad lived in Medina (AD 622-632), he either sent out or went out on seventy-four small assassination hit squads, raids, expeditions, small battles, or full-scale wars like the Tabuk Crusade in AD 630, in which Muhammad led 30,000 soldiers north to invade the Byzantine empire. Sometimes the conflicts did not end in violence, but too many times they did. All verses (and there are not many) in the Medinan suras that seem to speak of peace and tolerance must be read in light of this violent historical context. Not far from the few tolerant verses the reader will find intolerant and violent verses.

Sura 9:33, simply put, predicts the conquest of Islam over all religions. Islam must dominate the world through jihad.

(emphasis mine)

While I can agree with Matthew Parris that suicide bombers does not deserve our respect (really? Who knew?) They surely deserve a little more than our disdain. I should think they deserves our utmost, unequivocal condemnation and contempt, to be precise. But, sorry. I am simply not able to "disregard" them when they are blowing up people regularly and flying airplanes into buildings and the like. And, BTW, Mr. Parris, you may not have noticed, but suicide bombers are highly respected in certain parts of the world and within certain religious circles. In many Palestinian homes, for example, children aspire to grow up to blow up.

But,wouldn't it be just loverly to live in Parris' world of silliness? To know, deep down in our hearts, that those pesky Islamic warriors are only kidding!

I will sleep better at night knowing its just one of those silly little crazes that come and go in the world.