Terrorists have attacked officials, community leaders and peaceful and innocent gatherings to assert their presence and to instill fear and apprehension among the general public and law enforcement agencies.
Source/Credit: Inforum | Letters
By Syed Sajid Ahmad | March 15, 2015
Moderate Muslims, that is, majority of Muslims, are being put down by the West for not speaking up loud enough, and they are being gunned down by the terrorists for speaking up at all. In Muslim countries, more moderate Muslims are being targeted and killed every day than non-Muslims. Judges and lawyers have been gunned down for taking up cases against terrorists. Terrorists have attacked officials, community leaders and peaceful and innocent gatherings to assert their presence and to instill fear and apprehension among the general public and law enforcement agencies.
A school in Pakistan was attacked in December last year killing more than 140 children mercilessly. Two Ahmadiyya mosques were attacked in 2010 in Pakistan simultaneously with more than 80 killed. Two culprits were arrested, one on the spot by the attack-victims themselves, but the civil courts could not hand a verdict until the establishment of military courts in 2015, which gave them only prison terms. The governor of Punjab province in Pakistan was gunned down by his own bodyguard in 2011. The case is still in court. Moderate Muslims have to put their lives on the line even to raise two fingers as a sign of peace.
It is a failure of intelligence and law and order on the one hand and, on the other hand, while many countries have failed to educate masses about hate speech, some have encouraged it for political gains. Ideologies, religious and irreligious, have been used on political platforms to fester divisions, many times to a point of creating deep-rooted hatred among otherwise decent neighbors on a street. Easy availability of weapons of mass murder has exacerbated the problem.
The solution is in vigilance and law and order from the government side and instilling decency, self-respect and respect for each other as human beings from the media, school and church. Protectors of any faith – Muslim, Christian, Jewish or humanistic/atheistic – should consider seriously the fact that if it were not for the edict against Rushdie or the attack on Charlie Hedbo, both of them would have been buried in anonymity. Yet, in the name of standing by freedom of speech, dignity and respect, many among us disliked what the pope had to say about the Charlie Hedbo incident.
There has to be restraint on both sides to solve the problem of hate. There has to be a middle ground to tread upon to keep peace and harmony in an ever-integrating world. A need to share resources is leading towards global economies. This global change has to be reciprocated by respect for racial and ideological differences.
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Syed Sajid Ahmad lives in Fargo, North Dakota
Read original post here: Perspective: Ideology deepens divisions | Syed Sajid Ahmad
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