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How I produce my suicide bombers

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  • How I produce my suicide bombers

    Who produces the suicide-bomber? The answer is all of us. Let me tell you how I do my bit in this industry. I sit with the youngsters in Zaman Park and tell them about the atrocities being committed in Afghanistan and Iraq. I tell them that the world was opposed to these American invasions. Then I give them the background of the ‘neocon’ Administration in the United States under President Bush. I tell them that the coterie of men inciting President Bush to aggression are connected with America’s oil industry. Then I launch into the American grand plan to grab all the oil resources of the world.

    The youth in Zaman Park look at me aghast. They marvel at my knowledge of the United States and global politics. They ask me what the Muslims could do about it. I then give them a bird’s-eye view of the Muslim world. In recent history, the West has been targeting the Muslims. The reason is the potential of Islam to challenge Christianity and Western civilisation. I go through the history of injustice to the Muslims. I begin with the Palestine and give them the facts from the books of America’s own writers, Edward Said and Noam Chomsky.

    I compare the Indian oppression of the Kashmiris to the Palestine issue, and recount how the West has tilted in favour of India instead of making it relent in Kashmir. On the other hand, when the West had to rescue the Christians of East Timor the UN moved quickly to dispossess Muslim Indonesia of its territory. Then I move to the present. Muslims were being decimated in Afghanistan and Iraq. They were being killed like flies in Chechnya by Russia, winked at by the West. Before Chechnya, Muslims were massacred in Bosnia and Kosovo while Europe and America watched. America and the UK were together in the latest plan to reduce the power of the Islamic world further. The United States was preparing to attack Iran in the near future and Pakistan may be used as the launching pad for this American invasion.

    The young men of Zaman Park ask me what could the Muslim world do? I say the Muslim world was weak because it was disunited. It was disunited because it had governments who preferred to betray their own people and cooperate with the enemy of Islam. I give the example of Pakistan where Pervez Musharraf had sold himself to George Bush and deprived the nation of all honour. I give the example of Saudi Arabia where kingship had violated the cardinal Islamic principle of rejection of mulukiyat (monarchy). I also give the example other Islamic states, mostly those where Pakistani expatriate communities are located. I tell them that Islamic world was therefore weak in spite of its possession of the most powerful resource of today: the oil. The Muslim rulers sold it to the West, then kept the money thus earned in American banks. The world of Islam was impotent.

    By this time the youth of Zaman Park is greatly upset. I can see the change coming over them. They are not like me. They are young, full of enthusiasm and a willingness to take action against things they don’t like. They keep asking me how I proposed to get the Islamic world out of this horrible situation. I tell them it is not possible, given the present circumstances. They become more upset. They want from me a radical solution that would put an end to an almost cosmic injustice. I can at time see that they don’t like me too much because I give them no solutions. They see me as a comforter who actually gives them more pain. They can’t seem to reconcile to the idea that the Americans were committing all the atrocities against the wishes of the world, but the much-wronged Muslim world was too weak to do anything about it.

    I have more to tell them. The weakness of Islam springs from the Muslims’ general unwillingness to acquire knowledge. The West in general and the United States in particular had done what was enjoined originally upon the Muslims: acquire modern knowledge whose roots were embedded in the holy Quran. Then I tell them about medieval Baghdad and its renaissance of knowledge and how Europe had appropriated it. The moment I arrive at this theme, I start focusing on the education system in Pakistan. I tell them that it is meant only for the elite whose children learn everything in English as a preparation to rule Pakistan. There were three or four separate streams of education in Pakistan, based on the class system. I explain why I was opposed to English: because it kept me away from my own language which alone could be the medium of true knowledge. I give the example of Japan and China.

    The boys of Zaman Park are greatly upset. They are angry at me too at some level. They ask me, surely there must be something we could do to end the state of injustice in the Islamic world? I tell them nothing could be done because the Muslim governments were mot willing to put their heads and resources together. I launch into a diatribe on the efforts so far made by the Muslim world. I denounce the Arab League because it is ethno-centric and denounce the OIC and call it khassi (gelded) because it was unable to take action like NATO to save the Muslims from being slaughtered. My discourse is gradually undermining two institutions among the Muslims of the world: the state and the pan-Islamic idea of umma solidarity. What is happening unbeknownst to me is this: apart from their hatred of the West in general and the United States in particular, they begin to be disenchanted with the nation-state.

    My discourse is usually couched in military terms. When I talk of Islamic dominance I explain the military conquests of the great Muslim rulers of the past. I couch the weakness of Islam also in military terms and compare it with the military might of the United States. Because I present no alternative to military action, the boys start thinking in military terms too. Since the state is already rejected by them, they start looking at individual action. Once again I supply them with more data. I say Palestinian youths who do suicide bombing against Israel cannot be accused of terrorism. I object to the definition of terrorism being used by the West. I think if the Americans can spill innocent blood in Afghanistan and Iraq, Muslim suicide-bombers too can inflict ‘collateral damage’ of their own. By the end of this discussion the boys of Zaman Park are convinced that the United States could be opposed by individual action.

    The boys I talk to are not altogether happy with me. They think I am too passive in the face of so much injustice. They are put off also by the totally negative picture I paint of the Islamic world. As a secular person I stop short of reaching out to religion for final solutions. They want an activism I cannot provide because I belong to the ‘passive majority’ that does nothing. In any case, I am not the only person they have discussions with. They go to the mosque and listen to the imam. They meet those among their peers who attend religious gatherings. They come back to me and tell me how satisfying their experience has been with a purely Islamic discourse. There is also the possibility of activism. You can leave home and go with the seminarians, even take military training. They ask me about places where such training was being imparted. I tell them I know nothing about it. I am telling the truth. That is one detail of my society that I have either avoided or denied the existence of.

    I am jaded and without hope, but the young people of Zaman Park are not. They want to do something while I despair of even thinking about it. But I have done my job of providing them with the data-base of injustice from which they can draw when they need to justify their actions. I look at myself at times and try to decipher what I am doing. I become acutely aware of the nihilism I have embraced. I wonder why the boys take to me in the beginning when I am explaining the problem but break off at the point where I am supposed to give them solutions. Yet I feel good about giving them the ‘factual’ background of the injustice (zulm) of the United States and the causes of the weakness (mazloom) of the Islamic world. My sources are authentic and everyone in the Urdu and English press is writing about it. If I was alone doing it, I would perhaps feel unsure.

    However I am greatly upset when any one of the boys who used to hear me hold forth turns up at one of the training camps. I have great sympathy with the parents who then run about trying to find which camp he is training in. I help them locate the boy through my contacts in the establishment. I have no urge to get to know about the network of training camps; I simply want to get to the boy and get him back home. I find that no one has real authority over those who run the camps. I approach the great religious leader under whom jihad is being organised and beg him to release the boy out of pity for his parents who had thought that he had gone out only for tabligh. After the boy is formally released, there is much relief in the home of his parents. But the boy has changed. He has become tough through physical training.

    He is less tolerant of the speeches I give on the injustice of the United States and the victimhood of the Muslims. In fact, he now holds a parallel discussion with the boys. He tells them about actual plans to eliminate injustice against the Muslims. His compass of reference is beyond my comprehension. He refers to personalities unknown to me. He talks of regions where I have never been. The boys look at him with admiration because he has provided them with a solution whereas I was simply spreading my nihilism around. It seems I was good at setting the stage for radical action but was unable to define what that radical action should be.

    But I have my strong points. I am not a defeatist, meaning that I am not one of those who recommend ‘flexibility’ in the face of adversity. The truth of what is really happening to the Muslims of the world is stronger than the facts produced by the hostile Western media. I am without self-doubt. People say self-doubt produces the will to self-correction and reform: modification of behaviour to suit the circumstances. I call that defeatism. It is a legacy of imperialism when British-protected thinkers like Sir Syed Ahmad Khan sought the causes of decline within the Muslim psyche. I believe in the opposite course more befitting for the Muslim and in line with their great legacy. Remove the self-doubt injected into us by some intellectuals and you will no longer be under obligation to achieve compatibility with environment. Ours is the obligation to forcibly change the environment and make it compatible with our behaviour

    http://www.thefridaytimes.com/page8.shtml

    A little bit tounge in cheek but that last paragraph is scary. Do muslims actually think like that? That is a stupid and irresponsible idea to give to little children.

  • #2
    The last paragraph, although I hope the author is being sarcastic, is very scary. Doesn't anyone else find it scary? This part:

    But I have my strong points. I am not a defeatist, meaning that I am not one of those who recommend ‘flexibility’ in the face of adversity. The truth of what is really happening to the Muslims of the world is stronger than the facts produced by the hostile Western media. I am without self-doubt. People say self-doubt produces the will to self-correction and reform: modification of behaviour to suit the circumstances. I call that defeatism. It is a legacy of imperialism when British-protected thinkers like Sir Syed Ahmad Khan sought the causes of decline within the Muslim psyche. I believe in the opposite course more befitting for the Muslim and in line with their great legacy. Remove the self-doubt injected into us by some intellectuals and you will no longer be under obligation to achieve compatibility with environment. Ours is the obligation to forcibly change the environment and make it compatible with our behaviour
    That is what is frightening. Are Pakistanis taught to believe blindly in the ideologies taught to them as children? That they are right and everyone else is wrong, and that they must impose their beliefs on everyone else, by force if necessary? Seems like a very silly and irresponsible thing to be teaching little children. How could this not lead to conflict with other people?

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