| Home |

Thursday, March 28, 2024 | 6:03:44 PM EDT | About Kashmir Herald |

Kashmir Herald completes 14 years of News and Analysis Reporting........Kashmir Herald thanks its readers for their support !!!

OPINION

‘Doctors’ of Terrorism
ALLABAKSH

Twenty seven-year-old Dr Mohammed Haneef, temporary resident of Brisbane, is not the first Indian to figure in an ‘international’ terror plot—this time a failed one in the UK. There have been sundry ‘minor’ players from India including a US-based businessman whose bravado about teaching a ‘lesson’ to Americans by illegally selling arms to terrorist groups landed him in jail. Not very long ago the ‘Indian’ who attracted worldwide notoriety for his alleged association with global terror was a British citizen of Gujarati origin, Dhiren Barot. A court in the UK sentenced him to 30 years in prison.

Barot obviously converted to Islam not to embrace its values of peace and universal brotherhood but to spread terror and mayhem in the world. In fact, he was found to be such a hardcore ‘Islamist’ that he has been lodged in a prison cell where he cannot come in contact with other jailbirds and use his considerable talent to motivate them for jihad. On the other hand, Haneef’s family and many in India who knew him when he was studying in Karnataka refuse to believe that he can have anything to do with terrorism.

That reaction is only to be expected and Haneef may eventually prove to be totally innocent. But his arrest or detention—or whatever the term they use in Australia—has drawn attention to an uncomfortable fact that the evil of terrorism has spread into a noble profession; those who are trained to save lives are participating in plots to snuff out lives of innocent people. For India an equally disconcerting fact is that the world may no longer believe that India has remained immune to this disease that is unfortunately religiously labelled as ‘Islamist terrorism’, carefully nurtured and grown in our western neighbourhood.

If the failed terror plot in England and Scotland does establish that it was all the work of doctors and not their semi-literate assistants it will only prove that terrorism is not being sustained solely with the help of its foot soldiers who blindly follow instructions from wherever they come. Some of the more privileged leaders of these soldiers are going into the battlefields, presumably in the belief that their participation will accelerate the establishment of a universal Caliphate which, they think, has become necessary not only to end centuries of ‘injustice’ but to save the world from the influence of the ‘decadent’ but powerful Western civilisation.

It may not be easy for some to visualise that physicians can be drawn to terrorism for the world has often been told that it is only the uneducated or semi-educated lower middle class or the poor among the Muslims who become willing tools of the terrorists’ game of mindless death, destruction and mayhem. It is the life of deprivation and oppression that is supposed to ignite the fire of terrorism among the disadvantaged. Muslim societies that have shunned democracy—and there are a large number of them—are said to be particularly vulnerable to catching this infection of terrorism. What acts as a further catalyst is the constant reminder of all the ‘humiliation’ and ‘injustice’ heaped on the Muslims over the past centuries.

Such assertions have not been subjected to any scrutiny and they are assumed to provide an easy answer to the ‘root cause’ of the curse of terrorism. One of the strongest advocates of this misleading theory of relating terrorism to hurt feelings is Pakistan’s Gen Pervez Musharraf who himself seems to have deeply humiliated both the fanatics and the judiciary in his country. If the growth of terrorism is tied only to perceived hurt feelings of one community then it should have spread to nearly all the other communities in the world.

Even a cursory look at the history of the world will show that in the ages when conflicts were as common as they were prolonged it is not Muslims alone who were subjugated by invading forces. Islam too had its moments of victories that saw vast territories in Asia, Africa and Europe come under its thumb. It can barely be said that the Islamic invasion was always welcomed because the bitterness in the countries subjected to Islamic invasion in the past continues to this day. A very pronounced evidence of that was a Papal comment on Islam, which, of course, had raised justifiable worldwide protests.

The point is it is not difficult to look for faults in others when ‘revenge’ has to be justified. Subconsciously most people are able to avoid living with unpleasant moments from history in order to lead a life as normal and hassle free as is possible. Preoccupation with bread and butter issues and a desire to lead a peaceful life leaves little time for most people to think of ancient conflicts or trying to take ‘revenge’ for something that happed in a bygone era.

There are people today who are trying their best to kill this natural instinct to live with present realities; they want people to mould views based on wrongs in the past. Double doses of hatred are being administered daily by certain leaders -religious and political- who are by no means illiterate or poor; in fact, just the opposite.

Arguably, the top-most terrorist leader in the world today is Osama bin-Laden, the creator of Al Qaeda. He may not be very educated but he was born in one of the wealthiest families in Saudi Arabia. Some say he bankrolls all the Al Qaeda expenses, which must be running into billions of dollars. His second in command, Egyptian Ayman Al-Zawahiri, is a trained doctor who comes from a well-known Cairo family. All the 19 men involved in the 9/11 attacks on the US soil were either university students or graduates.

Not everyone will agree that terrorists run the Palestinian movement. But it is a movement where violence often takes a heavy toll of innocent lives, as do the acts of terror. Nearly all the Palestinian leaders are well-educated persons—doctors, engineers, lawyers, professors etc. Nearer home, the Hindu extreme leadership is almost entirely middle or upper class, though some may question their educational qualifications for the kind of lunacy they exhibit.

The involvement of educated persons from middle class or even rich homes in terrorism or religious-inspired violence is, therefore, not an unexpected development. It is worrisome nevertheless because this is a class that is supposed to lead with good example. It is also above suspicion and, hence, an easy prey for setting up sleeper cells which can be activated at short notice for actions that may not always fail as they did in the UK.



Printer-Friendly Version

Kashmir Herald - ‘Doctors’ of Terrorism

| Archives | Privacy Policy | Copyrights | Contact Us |
Copyrights © Kashmir Herald 2001-2010. All Rights Reserved.
[Views and opinions expressed in Kashmir Herald are solely those of the authors of the articles/opinion pieces
and not of Kashmir Herald Editorial Board.]