Terrorism: The Origin and the Destination – III

By: Sohail Parwaz

Writers Note: This article was written on the request of SAARC Writers Forum’s authorities in India and was appreciated by them as well, however, for the reasons best known to them, they showed inability to publish it, later on.

Terrorism: An Outcome of 9/11? At times, one is failed to understand that how come it’s possible that a relatively safer world, just overnight, turn out to be a TNT loaded truck that has rammed into a highly sensitive ammunition depot? But again, the world saw that happening, soon after the 9/11 drama. That’s not what the world says, rather the American researchers, scholars, writers and the electronic media experts claim. Hundreds of the journalists, researchers raised thousands of questions through their write-ups and research work. A known electronic media journalist and the most hated man by George W. Bush, Michael Moore even exposed the worth of that time’s American government by making one of the all times most popular video documentary, ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’.

There wasn’t any religious hate or bigotry prior to the twin towers falling in the United States. Minority and non-minority groups while having strong coalition-building were striding towards solidarity and sanity, the mistrust and hate weren’t visible in miles and miles even in the United States. However, ironically soon after the debacle the Sikhs, Muslims, South Asians, Arabs, and other Middle Eastern communities in the United States had borne the brunt of mistaken identities and misplaced hatred and that sad episode hasn’t have any interlude ever since 9/11. It’s exactly a decade that the WTC raised to the ground but the Muslims, mostly, in US are still facing the music and paying for someone else’s doings. The Muslim families attending even some philanthropist event are verbally assaulted by the radical white protesters. At the homeless shelter fundraising dinners the racists yells religious epithets at these “terrorists” and ask these young children, women, and men to go back to their homes (as, despite living there since ages, America doesn’t belong to them anymore) and never return. What to talk of Muslims, even the turbaned Sikhs are gunned down in what is widely believed to be a hate crime. One such incident happened in last year March, in California’s capital city, where two elderly, turbaned Sikh men, when they were out for a walk, were gunned down and unfortunately both died. Sadistically, the Muslims and other Asian and Arab Americans were twice afflicted – by external threats like all others, and by internal threats from some others. President Barack Obama does preach to “think back to the sense of unity that prevailed on 9/11,” but unfortunately the actions aren’t speaking louder than the words. The responsibility to protect against backlash has thus far not been fulfilled by the government or by the media. There is a dire need to make Christian America understand the terrorists are the ‘face of terror’ because of their terrorist acts, not because of their religion (Islam), turban or beard.

As a result of a Gallop poll based on telephone interviews conducted during August 27-30, 2010, with a random sample of 1021, US adults of age 18 or over, nine years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, 1% of Americans consider terrorism as the most important problem facing the country, down from 46% just after the attacks. This figure was more or like what a Gallop survey conducted just before the attacks, during September 7 to10, 2001, showed. In that poll, less than one-half of 1% of Americans mentioned terrorism as the nation’s most important problem, nevertheless, one month later, in October 2001, 46% named terrorism, the highest in Gallup’s history. From there on, terrorism gradually faded as a response to this question. At the one-year anniversary of the attacks, in September 2002, the opinion about mentioned terrorism as the country’s top problem fell to 19%, eclipsed by the economy at the top of the list. By the five-year anniversary of the attacks in September 2006, it further went down to 11% and it continued to drop from that point, albeit with an uptick to 8% mentions in January of this year. Interestingly, during all this time when the American public was rightly relegating the terrorism to its appropriate place, the American governments were creating the hype about terrorism elsewhere in the world and making that a prime excuse for sending their forces to Iraq and Afghanistan. As terrorism has faded, other concerns have risen consequently. Over the past ten years, American public has most commonly mentioned the war in Iraq (from 2003 to early 2008) and the economy or jobs (from 2008 to the present) as the top problem facing the country and not the terrorism. The death toll as a result of 9/11 disaster is far less than the fatalities of Iraq alone, so far and has no match to the total human lives losses of Iraq, Afghanistan wars and the drone attacks’ sufferings of Pakistan’s tribal belt and Waziristan Agency. Probably, that’s what which could be conveniently termed as a classic example of state terrorism but the controlled western media would probably be reluctant to spell it so.

Islam and Terrorism: Poles Apart. There is a much proliferated fallacy about Islam and Jihad that the religion teaches while the Jihad itself is the mean to execute terrorism which is quite unfair. All those who promote such baseless and nonsensical concocted theories are either ignorant of Islam or premeditated anti-Islam campaigners. Majority of the Muslims stand against terrorism and are very out spoken about it, but the sad part is that the media has a propensity to brush them aside in order to justify the war on a so-called terrorism. The Holy Quran clearly says and I quote:

“Whosoever kills an innocent human being, it shall be as if he has killed all mankind, and whosoever saves the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind.” (Al Quran – 5:32)

As a matter of fact no religion encourages or teaches violence then how could Islam, the religion of peace, be blamed for that? It is unlikely to be a true Muslim and at the same time be a violent terrorist. The Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon Him) Hadith says,

“Muslim is the one from whose tongue and whose hand you are safe”.

It should be absolutely clear that terrorism is used by people for political gains, irrespective of religions or nationalities but when you hear nothing but words like Islamist, Islamism, Islamic fundamentalist, Islamic terrorism or Islamic radical it does beg one to think what the real message here is. The Britain’s ex Prime Minister Tony Blair’s quote is on record that, there is no such thing as Islamic or Muslim terrorism. What he actually said is that:

“What happened in America [9/11] was not the work of Islamic terrorists; it was not the work of Muslim terrorists. It was the work of terrorists, pure and simple.”

It is now talk of the town that the American chauvinism, radical and prejudice policies are the root cause of terrorism throughout the world and Bush junior didn’t spare a moment to make terrorism worst. As a renowned American columnist Len Hart said that, “Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto paid the ultimate price for stating that the US imperial policy of propping up tin horn dictators causes world terrorism. She dared to say so. Condemning what she called ‘A false choice for Pakistan’, the late Benazir Bhutto laid terrorism at the White House doorstep, blaming US policies for causing, fuelling and inspiring what US regimes call “terrorism”. According to one of her analysis: the root causes of “terrorism” are US imperialistic policies, specifically the material and diplomatic support for dictators like Musharraf and earlier, Saddam Hussein and the Shah of Iran, et al. It should be obvious that citizens of other nations resent US support of dictators who oppress them.

The time has come that the root causes of the terrorism are identified and addressed with extreme sincerity and honesty and without any propensity, if the custodian of the world peace are really interested in making the world safer and peaceful or else we should mentally be ready for beaming up for the lost civilisations, soon. Although we are late but isn’t it better to be late than never.

(Concluded)