Message against terrorism

By Prafull Goradia

(June 04, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian) It would be useful to launch television programmes aimed primarily at Muslim women on the futility of terrorism and the role they can play in combating it

One sure way, sociologists recommend, to combat terrorism is to counter it ideologically. Cannot that best be done through Muslim women? A woman is a fidayeen, but very rarely. She is pathologically less prone to violence and more averse to accepting killings. The root of the predisposition is her enormous stake in procreation compared to that of a man’s.

The contrast is not as noticeable in humans as it would be in animals. The male’s role is normally confined to mating after which he may never meet the particular female again. In human beings, the continued role of father as the breadwinner and the head of the family deflects from the bare physical presence. The father loves his children by association; his biological stake is limited. So much so that it is often said that while maternity is a fact, paternity is an opinion.

Beyond her long pregnancy and the umbilical cord, her progeny is an extension of the mother; she cannot forget her children. She cannot disregard their death. Appeal, therefore, to her head and heart. Remember, to reach the average Muslim woman is not easy. Confined largely to her home, she has limited human contact except among her relatives.

Their source of public information is usually through their husbands, sons or brothers and what they hear from the khutbah after Friday’s namaz.

The answer should lie in regular afternoon television programmes beamed primarily at women folk on the futility of terrorism and the role women can play in minimising it. Educate women on this point and hope that they begin to condition, if not also indoctrinate, their children against the killing of innocent people. Islamic terrorism, since it began, has maimed or destroyed mostly innocents, whether infants like Moshe and other children or women and men who had not lifted even a little finger against Islamism or, least of all, the religion of Islam. Such bloodshed is not only a crime but also a sin.

The mullahs, however, teach and then brainwash the madarsa-going adolescents that it is the duty of every momin to participate in a jihad or a holy war. It was the earnest wish of Prophet Muhammad that, in due course, his followers should comprise the majority of humanity. Then only could the greater part of the world become a darul Islam where the writ of the sharia’h rules. There are three ways of achieving this sacred goal: One, converting non-believers or kafirs into Islam. Two, killing those kafirs who refuse to fall in line and three, to give birth to more and more Muslims so that they grow up to outnumber kafirs. To convert is the function of Sufis, dervishes and other holy men. To procreate is the function of women.

To kill kafirs is the function of young men for which they are brainwashed by mullahs. Then the youngsters are taught about the jannat and that he should play his part in the jihad. If, however, he volunteers for being a fidayeen or a suicide mujahideen in order to kill numberless kafirs, he does not have to wait for doomsday.

If reminded, mothers should realise that Allah could not possibly reward the murderers of innocent women and children with an immediate promotion to heaven. Exploding bombs in the middle of bazaars or shooting people, either their own countrymen or outsiders, is wrong and deserving of punishment by god.

Even from a cynical viewpoint, terrorism achieves little except bloodshed. The purpose of jihad is to preserve or establish a darul Islam which needs the capture of a Government and territory. Terrorism achieves neither. Even state terrorism like the saturation bombing of civilian targets by the USA in Hitler’s Germany or Ho Chi Minh’s Vietnam did not bring about surrender.

If television programmes can convince mothers of this futility of terrorism, a significant part of the ideological battle would have been fought. They must know that bomb blasts cannot establish a darul Islam and their sons are being exploited as blast fodder for the cause of vainglorious leaders. Therefore, they neither serve the cause of Islam on the Earth nor that of Allah. By the time a youth is, say, 15, and thus far in the care of the mother, he can be persuaded to believe that killing innocents is sin. Thereafter, he would be far less vulnerable to a madarsa and a mullah brainwashing.

-Sri Lanka Guardian