By Saad Al-Dosari
10 August 2015
We endure shock, grief and bewilderment with every incident of explosion in our land; with every piece of news telling a story about one of our kids joining the forces of darkness to fight his own religion and own people.
If there is anything we should have learned by now is that these people have no logic, no emotion and no mercy. Everyone and everything is a target for them. This should not come as a surprise to us. What do you expect of someone who is shooting blindly in the dark. What could be a better evidence of their insanity other than their brazen and heinous act of killing people standing in rows to pray. Killing those in the middle of prayers when the worshippers are bowing and prostrating before Allah the Almighty, is a sin of enormous proportion. But these terrorists do not hesitate to reach for the button and blow everything up.
Unfortunately, after so many years of fighting the deviant ideology responsible for producing such cold-blooded and blind criminals, they still exist. We have not lost the fight, but we did not win either. The lesson learned is that such terrorists and those brainwashing them to carry out the heinous and cruel acts have proven their resilience; whenever they lose a front, they switch to another.
Using logic to counter them has proven a long-drawn battle. They have lost sanity, they won’t disappear overnight, they are fighting for survival, and they care about nothing.
The true battle we need to engage in is by finding out the reason “why our youngsters have always been the easiest targets of such deviants who brainwash them?” It is a battle we are dealing with very lightly and very slowly. Actually, we need to be deadly serious about it.
This is no doubt a complicated issue with a number of factors involved. Improper interpretations of religion, unusual social norms and customs are among the factors that contributed to this situation. The outcome is chaos sowed by these terrorists who are brainwashed to kill and maim others.
For a lot of us, it is hard to believe those speaking our language, promising Paradise and heavenly pleasures in return for spilling blood, causing mayhem and destroying property. We ultimately reject them. But at the same time there are those who heed such calls because they are coated in religious messages.
That leads to a very simple conclusion. Contrary to the common belief, a lot of us do not really understand our religion and its ultimate teachings. Some of us fail to realize that in addition to the acts of worship, there are some fundamentals and principles that go deep to touch the soul and heart. Our religion has doctrines of peace and love for the whole world.
It is a long battle that we have to fight. We have to wage this battle in every home, school and mosque. To win it, we need to convey the unadulterated and pristine message of Islam to our youngsters who have been fed with deviant ideas to kill people.
We need plans to revamp our education, to purify it from extremist views. We need to curb the influence of anyone who uses his or her position to advocate hatred and discrimination. We need to show resolve and determination in following and punishing those who joined, recruited or preached these ideologies amongst our kids.
It is a long journey, but we should be all willing to be part of it.
Source: arabnews.com/columns/news/789166
11:05 PM
Moderate Islamist here
0 comments:
Post a Comment