My mind is always bubbling these days with these heart pinching and soul scraping questions where hardly anything is solved about these puzzles that are types of open-ended questions. All answers are in the forms of scraps, bits and pieces, vague, and obscure under layers of contradictions and even lies. Daily I open newspapers (as I have stopped to watch news on TV) and read various soul haunting and tormenting news of suicide attacks, sad immigrants, discrimination, intolerance, hate, and killings in various parts of the world. It is as if I have an addiction to reading bad news. I think there is something wrong with modern human beings. We are not living in the era of World War I or World War II but we are suffering more than in any war.
By Irshad Ahmad Mughal
We read warnings from governments that forces are on alert, security is tightened, and militants are arrested and then watch breaking news of another suicide blast in a country or in an area where we were least expecting. Maybe terrorists are psychologists? They know where and how to hit hard using psychology with biology. How to torment the 21st Century generation. The so-called social media shows what TV can’t show. We can watch distorted corpses in pieces. Nobody cares what the mind gets as a message from these violent images. How these images fix on consciousness and tighten our muscles. We become passive and alienated towards violent images. It becomes routine. Routine is the worst enemy of human beings. To overcome routine and a boring life, human beings created art, culture, sports etc but now the new generation is created free viewings of shooting, and suicide attacks etc. Once atheists and Nihilists invented these weapons of suicide attacks but now religionists plant them.
Though most of the victims are Muslims most of the terrorists are Muslims too. As a Muslim by birth, I can prove that there is no teaching preaching terrorism in Islamic Mythology and Teaching but who will listen me, as I am not a great Mufti, Scholar or Ayatolla. This is the phenomenon of the modern world. People believe and listen only those whose profile is high; either you are Hollywood star or a star player. They don’t listen to the music of the wise. They thrill at machine-like rock music that dumbs the ears. There is similarity between rock music and bombing markets. Both are noisy, crazy and dumb us down.
However, Muslims are told that suicide attacks exist in Islam. Nobody is told where the sudden inventors of AlQaida and ISIS came out. What is the history of AlQaida and ISIS? All best seller books cite sources, specific sources. These sources are quoted frequently and nobody investigates or probes whether these sources are right and authentic or not. So citations over citations are quoted in universities and degree holder professors told us these truths.
Why don’t these books start their stories from these questions and find authentic answers and then put their case in International Court of Justice to have them listen and bring criminals to punishment to save humanity? From where do they get the most sophisticated weapons? Who is there facilitator? Who provide them support? Who write manuals for them? Who wrote the script for them? Who trained them? What do they want? What is there end goal? What do they want to achieve? There are questions without answers. They don’t have a state but still they have a state. Where is the capital of ALQaida where states can negotiate with them to reduce their grievances through over the table talks? What will be end of this war? What is the prediction of the world’s best Future Think Tank?
If I infer from these questions, I can reach the conclusion that this war has no end if it is tried to be solved through existing war tactics. It will further spread to other peaceful countries and regions. Some day all will grapple with all.
Look at Bangladesh, a few years ago, it was peaceful country. Its economy was growing. Their citizen was prospering. There were indicators that they will overcome their suffering, poverty and misery. Suddenly, every thing has been disrupted. Just a few people put them at risk. Europe is banning their direct access to their markets. All country is passing through anxiety and panic. All security forces are useless. The enemy can attack anywhere any time in any country and in any region.
This seems like endless war. If we apply three key principles of Chinese war strategist Sun Tzu, we can understand where problems exist: (a) Know your enemy and know yourself and in 100 battles, you will never be in peril; (b) To win 100 battles is not the height of skill – to subdue the enemy without fighting is (c) Avoid what is strong. Attack what is weak. If these are three key principles to win the war, we can say international super powers are not utilizing these principles against ALQaida and ISIS but against weak states of Syria, Libya and Iraq only. They have failed to use these tactics against these ghost type terrorist organizations with loose structures.
Though some of the principles may be applied easily during war, however, we can blame several actors that lead this war but major actors consist of corrupt rulers whose interest is not to protect citizens but to grab dollars and pounds to deposit in off-shore banks.
All prophets and wise people warn humanity to be careful when grabbing money, as it is the root cause of all evils. They also guide rulers to focus on justice, peace and protection of citizens. On the contrary, most modern rulers are greedy businessmen who can earn profit from wars too.
The strategies of modern superpowers are illogical. First they start to portray an enemy. After that they start propaganda and prepare citizen’s mind through Hollywood movies to accept this as a justified war. Then they make allies of various rich against weak states to justify immoral acts. Suddenly, daisy cutter bombing start on cities or drone attacks make selected bombing. When people start to flee as immigrants, they activate international organizations to provide relief to these refugees in tents. Besides that, their citizens are mobilized to provide further donations to save humanity. Is this a joke, stupidity, arrogance, or irrationality? Simple minds don’t have answers, only questions!
