Through the eyes of terror

Through his suicide note, I tried to see the world through the eyes of a bright and soft spoken Muslim student, who carried out a shocking suicide attack on a campus in the United Kingdom, killing and injuring many. When I tried to imagine the reasons which would have prompted him and maybe some others too to take such drastic measures, I felt that there might be more to such events than mere fundamentalist idealisms. The event and the character are purely fictional .The opinions mentioned here are just intended to serve as the thoughts of the characters present in this piece, and are not intended to hurt anyone or their religious sentiments.

24 – December – 2007
London
It was Allan's birthday party today. I badly wanted to attend and would surely have gone if not for those gang of poker-nosed snobs. I wonder why they act so important. I just hate that smirk on their face when they see me at college. Hollow blonde skulls and pink cheeks are not anything to be so high-handed about.

What does it matter to them if I don’t shave and I dress up the way I do? It’s perfectly fine if they think that I dress up like some cartoon character with an odd name(I must confess I have never seen that cartoon),and that my beard looks like a beehive, and that the 'resin' on my forehead looks creepy, and that every bearded and traditional Muslim is a terrorist, but there is no reason why they should be telling it in front of so many other people in the room, people with whom I would have to study for three more years, right through my graduation.Are'nt they changing the way those people would look at me?

There are far too may wrong impressions based on appearances in this world and it is nothing short of a criminal offence to force your own malformed judgments upon someone else's conscience.

They would never understand why I look or dress up oddly or why I am a "loner", as they call me. Like my father did, I wear kurtas, the ones which my beloved mother stitched for me. The satanic mark on my forehead, as I heard one of them saying, is the mark of every pious and proud Muslim who grinds his forehead into the ground during the daily Namas.And I skip parties, as I feel it is not exactly a very good idea to be at a place where you know you would doubtlessly look like a startled wet kitten. And moreover, parties are not a thing which someone, who has his own and five other mouths back home to feed from his meager monthly stipend, can afford. And speaking about terrorism, aren’t the unending wars that are waged by these governments terrorism? Didn’t they take lives of thousands of innocents? Does not the terror that they claim is unleashed in the name of Islam, pale in comparison to the widespread destruction they have unleashed, in almost all parts of the world, during the major part of the previous century? And is not wooing hungry innocents with food and money to join their religion and embrace their faith, a kind of soft terrorism too?

Don’t these damned fools realize that they, with their unwhispered-to ears, unshaved heads and uncut foreskins, would similarly appear out of place and ridiculed upon in our homeland, the sacred land of God, The almighty Allah, the compassionate and the merciful? Why do they suggest that I should change, when I and my family have lived this way for all this years? What I do and what I should be doing should be none of their business.

Not that any of those taunts would affect me. Like hell it would. But what disturbs me most is the absurd and unfair set of laws, on which life runs here. Half the assignments and project works in our university are group activities, and by the time the groups are assigned, I along with another guy with a similar fate as mine end up together, forming the only team with two members among many other teams with five. We are so unwelcome in most quarters here that even getting a part time job seems next to impossible. In spite of our best efforts, it is not possible to match the efforts of bigger groups, solely due to the lack of funds and access to costly books and study materials. We end up getting the least grades in majority of the group assignments, and by the time job offers pour in, we would be the ones who land the last and least desirable ones. For none of our fault, we would continue to be second-rate citizens and maybe father underprivileged generations, one after the other.

I now realize that it is payback time. Sometime back, I happened to read a teaching by Ayatollah Ruhullah Khomeini from The English Translation of Pak Sar Jamin Sad Bad. He said-" "Kill all the infidels, as they want to kill you. Kill them, stab them right into the heart and slice them into pieces. You cannot control people without using sword. Therefore, we need the sword. Swords are the keys of heaven. Those who do not want to be involved in Jihad, the Holy Terror, but want peace instead, I want to spit on their face." I could not, and still cannot agree with the underlying thread of severe violence and cannot justify the bloodshed in the name of Allah, but now, I do see a tiny percentage of truth in it. I still don’t think that killing in the name of religion would take one closer to Allah.

But nevertheless, I can’t help feeling that the world would only be purer with the blood of these hypocrites. My fellowmen would have that many less people to contend with.Insha Allah, I have decided that by tomorrow when the sun sets, the world shall be purer, and the hands that shall do the cleansing would be mine.
Afzal Muhammad

The taunts from his classmates might have been more of a constructive criticism, except for the occasional ridicule. Maybe he had taken it a bit too much to heart. When we pass judgments on others we have to be careful so that it never affects their self-belief, and never leaves them feeling left out and depressed. It is much worse if it wounds their religious psyche, in which case the consequences could be even more fearful. Also religions, instead of concentrating on matters like strict adherence to their beliefs, laws and customs, must help people realize the importance of less of provocation and more of tolerance.