TERRORISM

We are living in the era of global village in which the technological advancements has turned the whole world into a small village. The nations who were kept apart and afar for so centuries now come to interact with each other from other corners of the world. This new way of life requires changes in the way we think about culture diversity. When we live in a multicultural environment we need to overcome the traditional ways of thinking which provides basis for racism and discrimination. These traditional ways of thinking are the typical stereotypes manner of thinking like “my religion is the best religion and everyone else should convert to my religion”, or “my language is the best language and other languages are not” as well as “my culture is the best and other cultures are the worst”.

We need to emphasize on “freedom of religion” as a basic human right and as well as solidarity of all human beings against crimes such as terrorism and mass murders.

People should wisely react to crimes and should not be deceived by the political traps organized by the political campaigns and projects which aim to divert the public opinion.

Terrorism should not be looked at from the religious and cultural perspective but rather from the perspective of the security of the states and countries in their political sphere considering in mind the questions like “how the terrorism is being used as a political means to reach specific goals in different countries?”

The terrorism in Afghanistan is an aftermath of the cold war in that country which closed the doors of schools for people for 35 years and deprived many generations from quality education and promoted ignorance and illiteracy despite the fact that funded projects used religion as a motivation to defeat USSR in Afghanistan. All these issues paved the way for what we have got today as extremist uneducated armed groups who are called Taliban and still kill people under the name of the race, language and religion. They kill innocent Muslim people of other branch of Islam calling them none Muslims and they murder the foreigners who go to Afghanistan as foreign troops being used and supported by Pakistan.

I think terrorism in Iraq, Syria and in Europe have different dimensions; different political agendas and they follow different objectives but all over the world, it is the Muslim community who are the main target and the main victim of the terrorist attacks and hundreds of Muslims die in the countries like Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, Palestine and the Middle East.

In Europe, the terrorism draws a line between religions and targets the solidarity of the religious communities to create war between Muslims and Christians or to pave the way for another war, a bigger war, a new world war.

What happened last week in Afghanistan were the same tragic terrorist attacks as the Paris attacks were tragic and shocking. Mass murder of innocent people and taking lives of civilians who have never been part of a war is always a crime no matter in which country or from which religion or committed by which party, it is always condemned and it is always inhuman and a brutal crime whether it happens in Afghanistan, France, Palestine, Israel or in the United States of America or other European countries. The terrorist blind attacks murder both Christian and Muslim innocent people as well as people of other religious groups and cultural background. The color of the blood of Muslims is the same red blood color as the Christian blood. The lives of all human beings are important and should be saved, irrelevant of their religion, race, language or ethnic group.

If a person takes a gun and goes into a cinema and fires at the people, he will kill Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, atheists and all the people who are there in that cinema for that particular moment because bullets do not ask and recognize the religion of the people.

Terrorism is a crime that threats the lives of people from all religious backgrounds exactly the same as all other crimes. 

                                                                                                         

If we look at the terrorism from the cultural and religious perspective, the terrorism will succeed in dividing us and murdering us in small religious and cultural groups, using us against each other.

The Paris attacks of the last week were the same attacks which happen almost every month in Afghanistan taking the lives of many innocent people who walk on the streets.  

Last week there were seven people murdered brutally by the ISIS in Afghanistan including men, women and children. They were taken hostage for one month and then brutally murdered and the government did nothing to save them because they were Hazaras, a minority group who has always been murdered and have historically always suffered in Afghanistan and have always been suppressed by the Pashtun rulers, but this time the reaction of the civil society was totally different.

One of the victims who were beheaded was a 9 year old girl called Shukorya but got famous for Tabassom (which means smile) because of her photo in which she smiled very innocently. She was so cute and innocent. The demonstration is called “Smile Revolution” now on the internet.

The civil society of Afghanistan took the coffins of the victims and wrote some slogans such as “Taliban terror us, and the presidential palace support them”, “Today terrorism kill us and it is our turn to die, tomorrow is yours”, “Silence against a crime is another crime”, “Death to those politicians who do nothing to save civilians from terrorists” and millions of people from different ethnic groups, Hazaras, Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hindus and Sikh citizens of Afghanistan marched on the streets of Kabul towards the presidential palace carrying the coffins and  shouted on the streets “We want a responsible government”. It was almost a revolution in Afghanistan. Everyone from every religion and every ethnic group united against the terrorism. They reached the presidential palace and broke in the presidential palace. The bodyguards of the president of Afghanistan shot and wounded seven people but they did not give up. They were inside the presidential palace with the headed bodies till midnight and after their representatives were asked inside by the president and promised to bring further changes for the security, they calmed down. Almost every ethnic group shouted that “I am Hazara” in the demonstration. They said it is not about Hazaras being murdered brutally, it is about us, it is about human beings murdered brutally for no reasons. Why would this happen to someone who travels from one city to another one?  The demonstrations began in different provinces and cities of Afghanistan and continued for many days.

In order to eradicate terrorism from a state, it is very important for the countries to pay attention to the following issues:

·         Solidarity of all religious communities including Muslims against crimes and terrorism

·         Differentiating between criminals and religious minorities

·         Decreasing the level of xenophobia and other forms of phobias at the state level

Starting communication and talking about the un-discussed issues from the perspective of rights and laws to bring more transparency and responsibility for the communities.

Freedom of religions

The states need to recognize the basic human rights and ensure that no one will suffer because of his believes and religion. This will pave the way for a country based on justice and fair treatment of individuals by the state. This will lead to security and multi-literal respect among different minority groups in a country. People of different cultural and religious groups will feel safer and will begin to support the solidarity against the crimes and terrorism.

Human Rights

Ensuring human rights is the basic fundamental infrastructure for a safe, secure, a just and fair environment.

Xenophobia

Xenophobia is a form of fear from a specific group of people who seem to be strangers to another community (for example from Muslims, from Christians, from Hindus, from Buddhists, from Moroccan people). It is actually constructed in our minds based on stereotypes and cliches.

Stop DDP (Dirty Destructive Politics)

Some of the politicians use terrorism to achieve their personal goals and objectives. Civilians get murdered to create an idea in the public opinion and to make people believe something and give permission to the governments to release more funds or to act as criminals to suppress and marginalize a specific group of people. People need to know how to analyze the political events and criminalized campaigns through advantages and disadvantages of the events. For example in the Paris terrorist attacks, which political group benefited the most? And which group was the most disadvantaged group? This analysis can be very useful in finding the main reasons of the most political crimes. It can be also achieved through looking deeply in the impacts of such attacks on the public opinion and its results for the specific groups of people in the long run.

Improve RCP (Responsible Constructive Politics)

In a remote village in Afghanistan, two groups of armed men were fighting each other and killing each other and destroying houses and infrastructures of the village. A new leader came in and said, stop killing each other and instead let me introduce you the new responsible and constructive politics. Each group can bring their proposals for creating new libraries, new bridges and new houses for the people. Every group will have a chance to compete in the quality of the works they perform. The one who does the best job will get more chairs in the parliament. They stopped fighting and started making new things for that village. Now the village has dramatically changed and both parties have their representatives in the parliament. They got rich and now they defend their rights through laws, lobbying and negotiations.  We all have a chance to contribute to stop war and promote peace in our environment, in the work place, in our country and in the world.

Equality

All the people living in a country should be treated equally by the state; otherwise the discrimination and unjust treatment will contribute in motivating people to join terrorist groups. That is why the equal treatment of all by the state is very important in terms of security and safety of the nation states.

 

Justice

Justice is the most important factor in security of the states. If the most intellectual people are not making decisions at the state level which can be accepted for all people of different cultural backgrounds, this can lead to insecurity and chaos in that particular state.  

Humanity as a platform

Religions are too small platform to meet the needs of a country at the state level. We need a bigger platform to include all cultural backgrounds.

Political pressure explodes

Minorities in all countries of the world suffer from being marginalized and discriminated. These discrimination and other forms of injustice and low level of providing services to these minorities will make the minorities even more distant from supporting the central government decisions.

The right leaders (stupid political leaders destroy human achievement)

Political leaders play an important role in guiding a nation to the right path of development through co-existence and accepting and appreciating the differences rather than putting different cultural groups in fight with each other for personal benefits.

Avoiding Stereotypes and Clichés

People are thinning mostly based on clichés and stereotypes. This way of thinking will lead to social unrest, social disorder and insecurity because the people who think based on stereotypes and clichés, they will also decide based on those false assumptions.  

Cultural Diversity Management

Multi-cultural countries need culture diversity management programs to promote understanding among people of different cultures and different ways of thinking. Multicultural countries often get problems in managing different cultures and that makes people of one culture better off in the cost of others. Such kind of situations will lead to inequalities and inequalities will bring instability and insecurity.

Dimensions of the cultural diversity

As per the Hofstede there are two types of cultural dimensions, the primary and the secondary. Most of the problems arise among people from different culture backgrounds when they are not aware of the culture diversity dimensions.

If the people get to know all these dimensions, there will be less chance for war because the understanding will be promoted and the differences will be accepted.

Crimes have no religion

Criminals do not represent a cultural or religious group; they represent criminals in every society. What the media is doing now is to relate a crime to a culture groups and to put pressure on a group of people. This is a big mistake and will lead to wars between people from different cultures.

Media bias

Media has a mission, a mission to spread the real news without political, religious and geographical bias and to stop sending hatred messages, instead spread the real situation news in a balanced and pre-impact evaluated manner.  Otherwise public opinion diversion against a minority group will happen and the credibility of the media will go under question. No one will believe what they hear.  Therefore the media neutrality is a very important issue.

Change the way you think

Do what you have not done yet. If you are a Muslim go to the Church and talk to your Christian brothers and sisters and if you are a Christian go to the mosque and talk to your Muslim brothers and sisters and understand their situation and their miserable living conditions.  

Ignorance and poverty

Ignorance and poverty are the cause of most of the crimes that happen in the 21 century. Those who commit crimes are mostly ignorant and poor people who are being deceived by others and motivated mostly by politics or money.

The impacts of terrorist attacks on the lives of refugees

Muslim refugees escape and leave their own countries mostly because of the same terrorism to seek refuge in Europe while they are affected and vulnerable of suspicion, mistreatment, misconceptions and misjudgments of the European citizens when they get into Europe.

When a terrorist attack happens, the media turns against all Muslim community and describe all Muslims as terrorists. Every individual Muslim refugee is being called at least once by the people around him as a terrorist and that makes the problem even worse. Almost 99 percent of Muslims believe that Taliban and ISIS are not Muslims because what they do is not accepted or confirmed by the Islamic scholars and they are being called as criminals in the Islamic countries too.

Muslims hate them because they believe they are using only the name of a religion for political purposes and not any of their actions and activities are considered Islamic.

There is no religion in the world which encourages its followers to murder innocent civilians including men, women and children. Religions always emphasize on co-existence, peace and helping other fellow human beings but what these terrorist groups are doing merely represent a community not a culture or a common belief and has no place and support among Muslim people in Europe.

Those who commit crimes are subject to punishments according to the laws of the counties but no one has the right to arrest or mistreat or misbehave other fellow human beings because of the crimes of another person. We should not generalize and look at the crimes as a group oriented activity or a culture based activity.

If a person steals something, it does not mean that all his family members are thieves. Crimes are individual acts and its impacts, it’s responsibly and punishment should also be directed to that individual who commits the crimes rather than being referred to his family, community, cultural group or to a circle of people who might believe in the same religion.