Some comments on mumbai terror attack from the media

MARTYRED MAJOR Always A Winner
3 Dec 2008, 0006 hrs IST, JANARDHAN ROYE
It was the start of the highly-anticipated and much-hyped, glamour track event of the annual school sports day the 100-metre final. It was to take place in the far corner of the sports field. Smartly dressed staff and students and parents, who could manage to take time off from work or home, had gathered there. Most parents sat in the sprawling shade of the shamiana, fanning themselves with the programme flyer. Then the marquee event of the annual sports was about to start. Almost immediately a great hush fell over the ground. The sprinters in the six lanes crouched, muscles taut, perspiration on brow, waiting to synchronise their forward thrust with the starter's gun. The hot favourite for the race was the head boy. A six-footer popular both on and off the sports field. Now, as the afternoon sun came blazing down on the ground, students in house colours, who had been flitting in and out of the white-chalk marked sports ground, paused and waited. The stern principal, sitting grandly in a blazer and tie, spotted the head boy's mother making her way towards the pavilion. Thanking her for taking time off for the sports, the principal whispered to her, "Would you please give out the first prize to the winner of the 100's?" The unsuspecting mother graciously accepted the honour not for a minute knowing the surprise planned. Just then the starter's gun resonated in the far corner of the ground. Crows leapt out of treetops. With a kick, the runners sped down the marked tracks, pumping arms and legs in a flurry of aesthetical grace and awesome force. Screams, boisterous cheering from the sidelines rent the air. Seconds later, in a dramatic, thrilling finish, the head boy was beaten by a whisker, by his junior. As an upshot the head boy's mother put the gold medal around the neck of the smiling winner on the victory stand and congratulated him and then smiled at the runner-up with "Hi there, son. You did a great job!" Remembering the Bangalore school event of that distant day, some 15 years ago, the head boy, now a techie in San Francisco, says, "I remember the winner clearly very good looking, always smiling, great all-rounder, exceedingly affable, the guy who pipped me at the winning post. Always a winner, that Sandeep Unnikrishnan."

THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN: New York Times

On Feb. 6, 2006, three Pakistanis died in Peshawar and Lahore during violent street protests against Danish cartoons that had satirized the Prophet Muhammad. More such mass protests followed weeks later. When Pakistanis and other Muslims are willing to take to the streets, even suffer death, to protest an insulting cartoon published in Denmark, is it fair to ask: Who in the Muslim world, who in Pakistan, is ready to take to the streets to protest the mass murders of real people, not cartoon characters, right next door in Mumbai?

After all, if 10 young Indians from a splinter wing of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party traveled by boat to Pakistan, shot up two hotels in Karachi and the central train station, killed at least 173 people, and then, for good measure, murdered the imam and his wife at a Saudi-financed mosque while they were cradling their 2-year-old son — purely because they were Sunni Muslims — where would we be today? The entire Muslim world would be aflame and in the streets.

Pak TV channel says 26/11 hatched by Hindu Zionists

Inki shaklein Hinduonwali hain, jis zabaan mein guftagoo kar rahein hain, woh zabaan koi Pakistani istemaal nahin karta hai (They look like Hindus. No Pakistani speaks the language they chatted in).The Americans executed the 9/11 attack perfectly. They managed the media very well. The Indians tried to repeat the formula but goofed up. The idiots made a complete mess of it

A comment posted about the above pakistani show on timesofindia by a reader:
Infact space aliens are responsible for both 9/11 and 26/11. They have disguised themselves as hindu zionists who are infact islamic terrorists.They are trying to occupy the planet as they need to place to stay. They chose Taj and Oberoi as they are good hotels to live in

Adil Najam on Pakistaniat
But, today, I have no words of analysis. What words can make sense of the patently senseless? I do not know who did this. Nor can I imagine any cause that would justify this. But this I know: No matter who did this, no matter why, the terror that has been wrought in Mumbai is vile and inhuman and unjustifiable. And, for the sake of our own humanness, we must speak out against it.
And, so, to any Mumbaikar who might be listening, I say: “I stand with you today. In prayer and in solidarity.”