The senseless attacks in Paris that claimed the lives of at least 129 people is a cycle of madness that must stop.
A group of fanatics unleash a wave of attacks that terrorizes innocent people like what we are witnessing in Paris. World leaders, in particular the U.S. President quickly appears on the screen with strong words of condemnation, expresses his support to his ally and vows to find, dismantle and destroy the terrorists.
The angry coalition quickly drops bombs, which result in indiscriminate killings in order to reach some level of satisfaction to avenge those who were killed.
Muslim leaders in the West quickly issue statements of condemnation that is never perceived by the media to be strong enough.
Hate mongers on the other hand take advantage of the situation to spread their hate against minorities. They attack Muslims and their houses of worship.
Tension dies down until fanatics resurface again with an attack and the cycle continues.
The media grabs the opportunity to sensationalize the killings. It brings so-called experts to discuss terrorism and "why they hate us." The experts are asked the same questions. What had happened there, can it happen here? They go wild in their speculations and they emphasize that the enemy is not coming but they are already here in our midst.
The experts carry a tone of racism in their analyses, as if we were dealing with sub humans. "They attack us because of our values, because of who we are" they emphasize. Even Bernie Sanders, the U.S. presidential candidate said in the debate Saturday night that terrorists want us to return to their culture of thousand years ago where women are third class citizens and young children are sexually abused.
Muslims pay the heavy price in all this madness. They face attacks and abuses. Hate against them increases dramatically. They walk in fear. While they themselves are prone to the terrorist attacks like everyone else, they are made to pay a heavy price as if they were complicit in the crime.
Journalists and so-called experts are overly excited when these kinds of incidents take place. Emotions run high and Muslims are treated as complicit in the crime and looked at as enemies from within.
As soon as Muslims are suspected, human intellect is put to rest and emotion controls the response. A conversation about the root causes is forbidden. It is seen as a form of weakness. Those who are brave enough to discuss the root causes are ridiculed and portrayed as terrorist sympathizers.
The act of madness is followed by a wave of madness, where states are bombed to rubble and the cycle of irrational thinking becomes the rule that governs the game.
When a non-Muslim murderer goes into rampage whether it is the right-wing Islamophobic terrorist who massacred 77 people in Norway; the Oklahoma bombing; the shootings that take place in the U.S., decision makers never lose their composure and introduce draconian laws against the entire race or community. They show resilience, control their emotion and do their utmost to come up with a sound judgement.
But when a crazy man of Muslim faith acts wild, the entire community is held hostage and they are all punished. The talk of the day is not about the root causes or the mental status of the culprits and the factors that have led to the senseless acts of madness, the so-called experts talk about Muslim values and the mentality of "us" verses "them" dominate the talk.
I wish, as we utilize our resources to discuss issues facing our societies, we could do the same with these acts of violence so that we can discover a solution.
Very few honest intellectuals discuss root causes that contributes to these kinds of events. Discussing the root causes is the only way out, but sadly our politicians and the media avoids talking about why some people are willing to commit these kinds of heinous crimes; they don't seek out specialists who dig deep into the factors that lead human beings to sometimes lose their sense of humanity and commit atrocities.
We as humans need to have a dialogue in order to reach out to our commonality and establish a sense of universality. Avoiding discussing the root causes of this madness is not the right thing to do. To honour innocent victims and avoid future catastrophes, we must be guided by our rational faculties and talk amongst each other as a human family to ask not just what went wrong, but how we can prevent future violence against all people.
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