Stopping the Suicide Bomber

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We have to condemn with loud voices, open speech and fearless thinking as much the terrorists as the system that spawns them

By Anwaar Hussain

bloody_hand_print.jpgYoung men, full of youth’s vigor, pumped up and brainwashed by patriotism or religious zeal always have, and always will, kill and be killed. That is a no-brainer. The question is why such sudden spates come in nations’ histories in which atrocities spike up sharply tainting every denizen of that state.

In the past, we heard people refer to the strong link between terrorism and poverty. According to recent studies done by political researchers however, the data does not support this fact any more. Why rich Saudi young men would blow themselves up, they ask. Political researchers now agree that terrorism is more linked to levels of political freedom a nation allows to its citizens, especially in those countries that are experiencing transition from autocracy to political freedom.

There is a flaw in this argument.

The researchers forget that it is in the soil of these politically repressed societies that the seeds of want, ignorance, squalor, disease and idleness sprout. A single factor of these by itself or any combination thereof can trigger the birth of the hydra-headed monster called terrorism. Pakistan is a case in point.

For much of its life, Pakistan has been a typical example of states with tightly controlled dictatorial regimes that crush the will of its people under the jack boot of its military. The many long years of unchecked despotism have indeed spawned in Pakistan a class of people who live solely for their own interest, who have no other stimulant than material satisfaction and no other cult than that of gold. The politics of this upper class is to, by hook or by crook, provide for themselves the necessary security so as to continue to enjoy their untold riches.

The natural revolt of the suppressed classes, on the other hand, and their assault on power that has abused them for all these years is not merely for love of liberty. It is also for a deep-seated hatred of those who accord to themselves all freedoms, who possess without merit the lion’s share of the nation’s wealth. Trampled and dazed by appalling poverty, the little people yearn for some of the beauty, some of the comforts, some of the luxuries of the upper class.

Could we then suggest that we are witnessing firsthand in Pakistan a classic struggle between haves and have nots? Perhaps so but with a caveat; unlike the past struggles, religion is being used, or misused, in this particular one like never before.

Devoid of a platform to launch its struggle from, a group of disenchanted people has come up that exhorts to kill and be killed in the name of God. A death-worship is engraved on young impressionable minds in the name of a deity that craves blood. Like drill instructors, the handlers of these young men constantly bombard them with sermons like, “How sweet is the fragrance of the martyrs, how sweet is the scent of the earth, its thirst quenched by the gush of blood, flowing from the youthful body.” The result; more than five hundred people have been killed and maimed in Pakistan just in the first two months of this year.

Let it not be said, however, that Islam is the only religion that has been, or is being, misused to this end. There are quotes galore from other sacred texts that glorify the act of human sacrifice. The Bible, for example, alludes to ancient cultures of the Land of Israel: “Their sons and their daughters they sacrifice to their Gods” [Deut: 12]. The Israelites too were drawn to it: “And they built altars to give their sons and daughters to Molech which God did not command nor consider this abomination [Jeremiah: 32].” As recently as 500 years ago, certain South American tribes used to leave children to die on mountain tops as presents to their gods. The common denominator driving human sacrifice, in short, is the belief that the deity craved blood.

With each violent incident, the powers that be huddle down. Unable to catch the perpetrators and blinded by a ‘rightful’ rage, they see no option but to centralize ever more force into the hands of those who govern unelected. This results naturally in even more despotic governance that strikes at all who resist, all who complain. It in turn invites yet another backlash from the reactionaries who care a naught for their own or others’ lives with the spiral of violence ultimately spinning out of control.

Nothing will change in Pakistan without the fundamental understanding of a simple fact by its opinion makers that only political freedom can rid Pakistan of its present menace. It has to be recognized that the structure of a society built upon wrong basic principles is bound to retard the development of all men, not just the underdogs’. It must be grasped that public rights rest essentially on liberty, whose morals and religion in due course evolve in the same direction. And nations are not free unless men, under the floodlights of a media that is able to zoom into the most obscure corners of power, start framing and executing laws that represent the interests of the lives of the people and not the interests of some distant masters.

If we want terrorism to end in Pakistan, we have to condemn with loud voices, open speech and fearless thinking as much the terrorists as the system that spawns them. For finally in Pakistan a time glowing with new ideals, new hopes of true democracy seems to have arrived.

In the end it must be said that NOTHING, repeat NOTHING, justifies the killing of an innocent human being, be he a victim of the terrorists or the state.

Copyrights : Anwaar Hussain

Essential Reading

1. Battle for God; Battleground Pakistan

2. Pakistan, my Fatherland, I weep for Thee



Comments

6 Responses to “Stopping the Suicide Bomber”

  1. Bob on March 15th, 2008 9:12 pm

    Stopping the suicide Bomber (in Pakistan?)

    Suicide bombing is used as a weapon of last resort by those who are over-powered by powerful weapons-laden regimes.

    Pakistan is a puppet of the USA—and the Pakistani people know it. They know that there is no weapon other than suicide bombing that will throw fear into their oppressors.

    If the USA wants to stop suicide bombing in Pakistan—the USA should pull its troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq—and use them to invade Pakistan—to depose the USA-Puppet government there—and to create a real democracy there. Having done that the USA must pull every troop out of Pakistan—so that Pakistan would no longer be a puppet-state of the USA.

    Let’s stop pretending that Pakistan is not a puppet-state of the USA.

    Bob

  2. Jonathan Stephenson on March 16th, 2008 5:05 am

    Puppet state or not, the same things to which you speak Anwaar are now happening in the US itself, this problem goes beyond nations, it goes straight to mens hearts, and their greed. It has always been the case that the absolute poorest, most down-trodden people are too weak, too scared to rise up and act, even at the point of starvation and imminent death. It is this fact that has allowed thousands of people with weapons to starve to death and murder millions over and over again, in all areas of the world, and under hundreds of different cultures. It is always been the case that it is the middle classes and some of the rich, seeing their own time coming in a distant future, who rise up and fight the system any way they can. History teaches us that this is not something new, but a repeating pattern since history has been recorded and undoubtedly long before that.

    The real lesson to be learned is that capitalism always leads to this result, even more so than totalitarianism, and that those few periods in history where the world has been at peace are the result of socialist systems where the wealth is shared to a much greater extent than possible under any other system. Human nature tends toward evil, it takes a system that moderates human nature’s most base desires to stem the most base instincts of man and his greed.

  3. joed on March 17th, 2008 7:04 am

    Anwaar, thanks for the fine article.

    I am at a loss. it just seems to me that the suicide bomber is a desperate person doing what he or she thinks will help to relieve the suffering, opression and misery that is their every day life. my guess would be that an educated wealthy healthy young person would become a suicide bomber with thoughts of helping to relieve the suffering of others. but that is just a guess on my part.

    being a caucasian american doesn’t help me to understand but i am empatheic to all humans.
    it seems to me that the opressed can not opress the opressor. seems to me the suicide bomber is justified in his attempt to get the opressor out.

    it is truly a human way isn’t it.

    something else that i find truly human is how the israelis, after the genocide on them in europe, how they can turn around and do the same to the palestinians. certainly palestinians have a right to do whatever they can to stop israel from killing them all. desperate people do desperate acts.

    anyway anwar, i have tried to add to the conversation. thanks again for the fine articles and i look forward to the next one.

  4. G N Quadri on March 17th, 2008 3:18 pm

    Again a good article that provides food for thought. The reasons or motivation behind Pakistani young men willing to lay down their lives, hold true but I feel they are being taken advantage of by vested interests with hidden agendas; such people do not care two hoots for the young people they send to their certain death, leaving behind loved ones (in many cases aged parents) to mourn them.

  5. Jeff KHAN on March 18th, 2008 11:12 pm

    What else can we do?
    What kind of other weapons do we have today to stop usa and israel?
    What would have happened in Iraq and Afghanistan if usa did not meet any kind of resistance in those countries?
    Would there not have been bordells and bars in every corners in evry street in evry city\toen? Or a lot of other “funny” things in the name of democrasy?
    Regarding Pakistan and all these sicide bombs, i think this is the price we must pay for all those wasted years. When we could have given them education but did not.
    With no education to think or reason, THOSE WHO COMIT, it will be no surprise if this is SOME TIMES masterminded by jews or hindus. If these were our uwn “heroes” why do they always hit civilians?
    May be the points is not to take out the leadership, but to destabilize the country? To criple it economily? To spare the pro-western leadership? So it get even more western dependent.
    BTH How much did pejja invest in education sector during all these years?

  6. Matt on March 19th, 2008 7:13 pm

    I think this question of “the good” is always pivotal for me. Scientifically speaking- peace as a principle can only beget peace. and since peace is good, thus that which is good is a means to its own end. No other means to a peaceful end will work than that action. To philosophically realize this, one cannot have despair govern one’s identity, but hope. Thus poverty and class systems are intrinsically oligarchical in nature, as they deprive from both the slave AND the master the liberty to realize the commonality in the human soul which is of the same potential- negating any means of a truthful sense of hope and love in anyone.

    But what means do we have at elevating that most subjective sense of identity in the end to realize that potential? Free will must be taken into account, of course, and freedom too.

    Was there ever a system existant upon the earth which most approximated this?

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Anwaar’s articles appear simultaneously here at Truth Spring and at Soul Vibes in The Pakistan Tribune.


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