Hotel Babylon: The Marriot Hotel Explosion

It was whilst browsing the internet that I came across the headline on the BBC that the Marriot Hotel in Islamabad had been bombed and that witnesses reported many casualties.

Feeling nauseated by this news I asked myself what kind of a perverted mind would blow up an international luxury hotel in the capital? What can such a nihilistic act achieve other than increasing hatred for the perpetrators?

My initial thoughts went to my wife who is currently in Islamabad and who works nearby. I rang her and was relieved to find she was okay. Then I thought about all the unsuspecting guests, passers-by and hotel staff whose precious lives have been snuffed out.


The latest reports from Geo News, as I write, are that a small car entered the front of the hotel and a man came out screaming for those who wanted to save themselves to run away and a siren was heard. Then a large dump truck packed with explosives smashed into the hotel and released its hellish cargo. This sounds clearly like a suicide attack and in the month of Ramadan too. These people, who do this in the name of Islam, are the lowest of the low and have nothing to do with Islam or any other religion despite their claims. I hope the sick individual who was in the truck is burning in hell as we speak and I urge the Government of Pakistan, and Zardari in particular, as the head, to really go after these parasites who are destroying the very fabric of Pakistani society.

If this is the blowback for supporting the Afghanistani mujahideen against the Soviets in the 1980s it makes me wish that Pakistan had never got involved and had left the poor Afghans to their fate and not been involved in America's war with the Soviet Union.

What is clear is that these terrorists cannot be reasoned with and they need the full force of the State to be against them if they are to be defeated and a nation is to be saved.