Terrorism

                                               

From the genesis of the world, human beings have always been considered to be superior in comparison with all other species. Human beings possess some qualities that differentiate them from the other species. Amongst them the most important quality a human being possesses is conscience – a tool to differentiate between good and bad, moral and immoral.Conscience forms a person’s character as well as his/her outlook towards the world. Therefore, the welfare of a society or the world largely depends on the collective conscience of all human beings living in that particular society or all over the world. But we humans are very different in nature from one another. Our moral consciousness is fashioned by several factors – society, religion, convention, education, our upbringing and so on. Therefore, from the very beginning of this world, we human beings have been collectively neither an upright race nor an immoral one. There have always been good human beings as well as bad ones in this world. Human history consists of both good and bad incidents. Terrorism is one such undeniable ignominy of this human race – a race in which good and bad are mixed simultaneously. To cite the definition of terrorism, it can be roughly said that terrorism is an unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially upon the innocents, to gain power and supremacy.

To begin with the purpose of terrorism is nothing but attaining power. There are mainly two types of terrorism we have seen in history – usage of terrorism to gain or maintain political supremacy and usage of terrorism to claim religious or racial superiority. Ironically they both are interrelated in some ways- political leaders use religious or ethnical sentiments of common people to gain or maintain political power whereas religious leader use the religiosity of common people to gain political power or the control of a nation, a state or an area. However, there is another kind of terrorism that is caused by common people - the oppression and intimidation upon the powerless people by the powerful on the basis of caste, gender, religion and individual shortcomings to proclaim their supremacy.

Politics is the art and science of government. It includes all the activities associated with the governance of a country or an area. A Government gives a certain individual or a group an immense power to control a whole nation or an area. Like all other things, politics has also both good and bad sides. The good part indicates the fact that it is a necessary component of a nation or an area and the purpose of politics is to work on the betterment of a nation inside out. But the negative side includes the fact that the intention of political groups or leaders is mainly to gain the profuse power of governance. Given the human weakness towards power and wealth, most of the political leaders undermine the fact that “with great power comes great responsibility”. They can do whatever it takes to reach their selfish aim. They use violence and intimidation upon their opponents as well as the common people to maintain or proclaim their dominance over a nation or state. Although terrorism is there in every form of political structure, in an authoritarian or totalitarian society or nation political violence is more evident than in a democratic one. Since there remains only one political party to dictate a whole nation, it is quite natural that they rule the nation in line with their own ideology which the citizens must adhere to. Whenever common people dissent with them, they always try to maintain their power and domination by use of violence. Authoritarian countries like Iran, Turkey, China, Russia, North Korea do not actually permit freedom of expression and thinking. That is why the dissenters who protest against them are either being killed or put behind the bars for years. These autocratic regimes violate common human rights and always keep their citizens under their intimidating control just as we see in the Orwellian society of the novel “1984”. This unlawful use of violence and intimidation is a form of political terrorism. Besides, Adolf Hitler’s mass homicide of about 1.30 million Jewish people, the British’s killing of thousands of Indian natives who protested against their imperialism, the countless genocides of innocent people by the emperors and imperialists like Taimur Long, Chengiz Khan, Nero etc. fall into this category of political terrorism. In a democratic country, the political leaders indirectly instigate the use of violence for their political purposes. The riots, oppression upon the powerless by the powerful people, murder of innocent lives, violence upon women – all these sometimes have political connections and provocation of the political leaders.

Religion is one of the most important driving forces of human life. Putting aside the non-believers, it will not be a hyperbole to say that human lives are mostly driven by three things – oxygen, food and religion. There are almost 4200 religions all around the world. From the beginning of this world people have been finding consolation in God and thus it led to the creation of religion. Faith in God assures people that there is always a divine companion with them both in their happiness and in their sorrow and despondency. In this way, it softens the hardships of human life and gives them a hope of better future. It is to be noted that despite the cultural and ritual differences, there is one common thing in all the religions – that is the purpose of religion is to pursue God through life. But all religions have mainly two kinds of followers – Liberals and Fundamentalists. Liberal people are those who explore their own faith through their own lives and in doing so they enrich the values of humanity. But the fundamentalists, with their vile greed of power and wealth and bad intention of gaining racial supremacy, have transformed their religions into a formidable thing which Marx called “the heart of heartless people”. The sad part of all religions is that these fundamentalists control or dictate over all the religious people. For their own purpose of maintaining their authority and gaining political benefits and in some cases power, the fundamentalist leaders of religion propel the dogmatist religious people to fight against others for the sake of their religion. Thus, religious terrorism comes into being. If we look back in the past, we can find hundreds of this sort of religious terrorism but to mention a few most heinous instances, we may cite the attack on World Tread Centre on Nov 09, 2002, the explosion on the Taj Hotel, Mumbai on Nov 26, 2008, The 1993 Bombay bombings, the recent attack on a Church in Sri Lanka, the killings of 200 children of an Army School at Karachi in Pakistan etc. 

However, although we mainly consider terrorism only in its political and religious form, there is another kind of terrorism – the coercion on the powerless people by the powerful on the basis of caste, colour, individual shortcomings etc. Upper class people’s oppression, intimidation and killing of the lower class people, women being oppressed, raped and killed by misogynistic men, exploitation and killing of innocent people by the powerful – all these fall into this category. 

If we inspect the root causes of terrorism, we can detect the fact that religion, politics or any other ideologies do not actually encourage terrorism. What really does encourage terrorism is nothing but the greed of power. That is why we can see that the terrorist organizations like ISIS, Taliban, Boko Haram emerged as revolutionaries of certain religions but as years passed, they have taken control of certain regions and announced their dictatorship. They now indulge in dominating over the lives of those who once supported them for the sake of religion. It is really shameful for human beings that these terrorist organizations have been created by the inhumane fundamentalist religious leaders with the help of the government of their state and in this way they have now become a part of international politics. Hence, a serious endeavour to terminate those terrorist organisations has never been made by the world community. For example, USA’s so called “War on Terror” in 2002 remained as an irony. In protest against Russia’s usurpation of Afganistan in 1979, USA along with Pakistan’s intelligence agency ISI had supported and trained the terrorists of Taliban to wage war against Russia but it backfired on USA in form of the attack on WTC. The masterminds of that attack were supported and ensconced in their territory by the Talibans themselves. This single example shows itself how international politics and terrorist organisations are intertwined with each other. Therefore it is to be noted very clearly that terrorism has nothing to do with any religious ideologies. It will be wrong and unethical to blame religion for terrorism. The use of terrorism on the powerless lower class people by the upper class and especially on women by men are also never encouraged by any religion. It is the misunderstanding of the religious norms and the lack of education and conscience that drive human beings towards such misdeeds.

To conclude, instead of religion, fundamentalism must be blamed for the emergence of terrorism. And only education can save humanity from the annihilating jaws of fundamentalism. We must educate ourselves to get rid of all the superstitions, fanaticism, dogmatism and learn the core values f our religions whose only purpose is to better human life. We must enrich our conscience with good reason and principles of rationality. We must inspect all the rituals and customs of religion with rational thinking and seek for the truth behind them. In such way, we can eradicate the virus of fundamentalism from our mind and heart and change our outlook towards the world. We must understand the value of our life and give much importance to the lives of the others irrespective of religion, caste, colour, nationality and all that. To look for a better world, we must inculcate ourselves with the norms of love and put out the flames of hatred existing within ourselves. Revenge can never be an option to end this fire of terrorism; revenge only adds fuel to it and hence if it is chosen, the living remains of humanity will be burning in that fire. We must save humanity together from this fire because humanity itself is the first and foremost religion of all human beings. Let love and compassion be the other names of religion.

~Imran