Alan Duff: No version of Allah condones such behaviour

People holding a banner reading 'I am Brussels' behind flowers and candles to mourn for the victims at Place de la Bourse in the centre of Brussels. AP photo / Martin Meissner

You don't tell the Brussels airport and city metro terrorists - the plural deliberate because they hunt in packs - there were children. These pitiless cowards do not care.

They've reshaped their twisted religious narrative to suit their murderous agenda, used Allah as a front to ordain willful ignorance and thence murder of innocents.

These deranged w***ers really believe that killing innocent civilians, children be damned, will get them into heaven and in Allah's good favour. Surely no version of Allah condones such behaviour?

No need to tell, in this case Belgium's security forces, its anti-terrorist squads, intelligence, that there were children at Belgium airport and no doubt children in the Brussels metro stations they also attacked. They know. And the righteousness this gives is not the same self-aggrandising, self-righteousness of hate-filled terrorists.

It is hate, to be sure. But justified hate, grimmest incentive if you will, to ensure these people are going to get theirs. The murder of children is a line crossed. Forgiveness is out of the question, for the individual or his group or the ideology they believe in. They're finished.

No rules on humane consideration apply to them. None. Not a fair trial, not the objective process of the law, not decent treatment while incarcerated - nothing. They deserve nothing of our humanity, none of our understanding. They've got to be taken out wherever in the world they rear their ugly heads and preferably before.

Not difficult to imagine them sitting around planning these attacks, whipping themselves into a quasi-religious fervour frothing hatred for everything Western, non-Muslim, tolerant and free. Shouts in Arabic were heard as shots rang out followed by explosions.

Airports and metros are the easiest targets, like the streets of free, democratic cities. Not so free in their own Arabic countries, not even a resemblance. Places we Westerners could not go to and preach Christianity or secularism, agnosticism, atheism, democracy, or just plain tolerance. They do not come from a tolerant, open-minded culture. Even their more moderate believers would kill us if we announced ourselves as any of the above.

Not so long since the November 13th attacks in Paris. Days ago that the lone survivor those attacks was shot in the leg by security forces in Brussels and taken into captivity. It took but one day for his lawyer to declare his client would be fighting both his extradition to France, as well suing the prosecutor who said that the murderer had admitted changing his mind in the November attacks on blowing himself up like his brother did.

One day to exploit the rights of prisoners in our system, no matter what grave charges against him. This guy - offended at being called a coward- who backed out of his diabolical plan to be a suicide bomber?

As I write this, there is live BBC TV coverage; witnesses interviewed, people in shock, the damage to the airport building, a story unfolding. There are reports of explosions in the city metro. By the time you read this we'll know a lot more.

But we won't be a hair-width closer to getting into the minds of these people. They've stepped over into another conceptual zone where reason and decency do not exist. Gone into a state they cannot be negotiated with.

So we shouldn't even try. Just hit them back ten times harder. No, it won't end the problem. But nor does anything else work. It is them or us. Sanity versus insanity. Morality versus immoral fanaticism. It may even be a clash of civilisations, if their version can be called civilised - and it can't.

My last time passing through Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport in March, I confess to looking hard at Muslim women as likely to get past the beady eyes of airport security. A terrorist fanatic is a terrorist fanatic whether male or female. They will know it is human nature to trust females more.

But it must be said loud and clear that these people do not represent Muslims, the majority of whom are decent, ordinary people who just want to get on with life. However, it must equally be said that, the tenets of Muslim belief are not compatible with a secular society.

There are too many immovable obstacles in the way, just about all on their side. From five times a day prayer, to their concept of women, to their attributing everything of scientific fact not to science but their God.

I am hopeful, but not enough to believe it might happen, that we can get around a table with moderate Muslims and work out how to co-exist. Maybe. The others? Forget them. Damn them forever. Curse their every sick thought, loathe their intractable ignorance, their hatred of everything about us Westerners. Kill them back.

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