FREEDOM has many perspectives and at a personal level, it simply means the choice to live life within the confines of law and order and with the mindfulness that we should live and let live without causing harm or hurt.
Christchurch left a deep dent in our faith on humanity. When lives are not valued, even one’s own, to prove a pointless belief, we are regressing and not progressing.
And in the latest bombings in Sri Lanka, hundreds are dead or injured. Places of worship have become the riskiest place for people to be. Very sad for the rest of us but the perpetrators are often shamelessly exultant about this.
When communities live in fear of attacks, freedom loses its meaning.
What drives bombers to destruction? It is basically, ethics of self-sacrifice gone wrong. Research has found that it is a sense of injustice and desire for change. Suicide terrorism is said to be the most extreme example of asymmetrical warfare.
It is admirable the Sri Lankan president said in a live interview that terrorists are a different class of people and not associated with religion as such. What do all terrorists have in common? The desire to kill and justify the barbarism as being acts of salvation.
The return of religious wars is frightening and is an attack on humanity. Humans envisioned and worked towards the grand idea of being free from many shackles that kept us warped and wrapped in servitude for centuries. We escaped the bigger human misfortunes such as superstitions, ignorance, and poverty. We enabled scientific progress and freedom of thought and we allowed technology to invade us in the belief that freedom would be given to people and empowered without the abstract restrictions and boundaries, but we have been wrong.
We have not been freed, we have not come of age, we have not matured, we have not grown and we probably never will.
The nightmare we are facing with people killing people is real and no country is spared and despite all the policing, it still happens. The argument that race and religion have caused more wars and conflicts than any other factor has been doing its rounds. It is obviously not a theory born out of research but the signals are all too obvious. Religion is based on faith and when faith is warped and trapped in fanaticism, it becomes a cause of misery.
America may not see a religious war because of its strong founding ideals but yet racism manifests in many forms, nurtured by white supremacists who seem to have racism in their DNA.
White supremacy, established long before the founding of the US, found its footing in this country post-Reconstruction through both policy and physical space.
This strategy to make a national statement of values through the icons and ideas of white supremacy grounded itself throughout the South and conspicuously attached itself to institutions of power.
Trump’s wall is not about security but about the fear that America was “turning brown” too rapidly and that it was a threat to the white supremacists.
The wall is supposed “to prevent illegal immigration, drug and human trafficking, and acts of terrorism”, but we know the truth it is just another prop for Trump’s political mileage.
The point is racism and religious prejudices should not be normalised and dismissed as part of a system. A random incident may even be the cause of a child growing up to be an extremist.
Extremism and terrorism are threats to the world and efforts to annihilate them should be concerted for effective outcomes and Malala Yousafzai’s words are spot on , “With guns you can kill terrorists, with education you can kill terrorism”.
Comments: letters@thesundaily.com
