Using 16-Year-Old Suicide Bombers to Destroy Areas of Worship, Killing Old Folk, Women and Children: Is there any Islamic law that allows this kind of savagery?
By Aasim Zafar Khan
September 07, 2013
Pick a terrorist attack. Any terrorist attack. Hours after it happens, the pundits gather on national television and dissect every aspect of ‘what happened’? The morning after, the dailies are awash with grave details of ‘what went wrong’. It usually revolves around the following: There was an intelligence failure: we didn’t know. Or, one step further, there was a coordination failure: we knew, but didn’t tell the others in time. In other instances, it’s a capacity failure, how we just didn’t have the resources to handle the situation. The list goes on and on.
Eventually, the buck stops somewhere, and people are suspended from duty. Some are transferred to lesser positions elsewhere in the country. Committees are formed to look into the ‘failure’. And that’s that. We hardly ever hear back from the committees. The media moves on to the next terror attack, or the next suo motu, and we, the public forget. And the damage is done.
Accepted that any terror attack is a failure of some sort, be it intelligence, coordination, or capacity. But what about the perpetrators? Should they not also be held accountable for what they have done? When terrorists strike a target inside our country, what exactly are they doing? Quite simply, they are tossing aside the country’s laws, its constitution, and its sovereignty. When truckloads of terrorists, armed to the hilt, attack a check post or a jail, is it not an invasion, and how is it different from US drone attacks that we so vehemently hate and oppose?
When terrorists use 16-year-old suicide bombers, are they not going against the very covenants of the religion in whose name they are apparently fighting? When terrorists attack marketplaces, and areas of worship, killing old folk, women and children, is that not un-Islamic? When girls’ schools are blown up, is it because Islam does not allow women to be educated? Or how about when they abduct our servicemen and butcher them on camera, is there any Islamic law that allows this kind of savagery?
The unequivocal answer to all of the above is no. But the reason why this doesn’t happen is twofold. 1) Terrorists and terrorism both have become an integral, and on some level, accepted, part of the Pakistani landscape, and 2) we are so consumed with finding faults in our system, we fail and forget to criticise those who are trying to destroy the system, and replace it with one we don’t agree with. However, for the tide to turn in this war against terrorism, the state needs to use the same tools being employed by terrorists, and turn it on them. This means religion.
During the occupation of Swat, Mullah Fazlullah’s sermons played a vital role in his demonic hold over the valley, as his religious rhetoric was virtually unchallenged. However, when the ISPR launched its own set of radio stations, as a countering narrative to Fazlullah’s rhetoric, it sparked a debate within the listeners, and the militants’ hold on the people of Swat eased. This countering narrative strategy must now be employed by all the various stakeholders in Pakistan, including but not limited to government officials, and the media, because quite simply, in the absence of a countering narrative, any narrative present at the time, has its desired effect.
But it doesn’t end here. In the mid-1800s, a concept today known as ‘propaganda by the deed’ took root in Italy. Its premise was simple: ‘ideas spring from deeds, and not the other way around’. Later, a Russian revolutionary by the name of Mikhail Bakunin took it further, stating that “we must spread our principles, not with words, but with deeds, for this is the most popular, the most potent, and the most irresistible form of propaganda”. Terrorists’ propaganda revolves around this very concept.
In today’s day and age, with countless television news channels broadcasting live around the clock, coupled with social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, the media has unwittingly become an indirect multiplier of the terrorists’ propaganda. While television channels’ breaking news coverage allows hundreds of thousands of people to be informed of incidents in real time, it also makes the viewers a vicarious victim of the incidents. This concept is known as ‘terror magnification’. Watching terrorist attacks live on TV has a much greater effect than reading about it in the papers the next morning.
But the media must report. That’s what it’s there for. News blackouts (like the one enforced by Saudi authorities during the seizure of the grand mosque in 1979) are a thing of the past, and can only be expected by undemocratic, dictatorial and monarchical states. There’s no room for any of this in a democracy!
So what do we do then? The media must report yes, but it should not allow its coverage to become a terror magnifier or a propaganda dissemination tool.
Perhaps the answer can be found in the United States. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks in New York, all the global news channels were running the footage of the burning twin towers on repeat. Yet, there was something on American channels which set them apart from the rest – a bright red line on top of the screen which read: America under attack. These three words set the tone for the response to the attacks. We saw the same on Indian channels when Mumbai happened. The media reported the event, but took a stance too, which then permeated into popular sentiment.
Going forward, a national counterterrorism policy is on the cards. And it must include mechanisms and frameworks to counter terrorist propaganda. Or else we will find, like the ship with so many rats, that you plug one hole only to find another.
Aasim Zafar Khan is a media consultant and trainer.
Source: http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-9-200470-Turning-the-tables
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-terrorism-jihad/using-16-year-old-suicide/d/13393