TOWARDS GLOBAL PEACE

Terrorism is an unnatural act. Neither reason nor conscience can ever sanction it. But often a person, swept away by emotion, ends up perpetrating terrorist acts. In this regard, education both formal and informal—would serve as a deterrent factor. Even if there are terrorists who are educated, they are so only in the technical or professional sense; they are deficient in learning in the broader sense of the word. Let us understand the phenomena of radicalization which is nurturing terrorists in Muslim society. Present-day Muslim militancy derives neither from the Quran nor from the Sunnah. It is basically a product of the Muslim media that has formed the mindset of present-day Muslims. Muslim militancy and suicide bombing are mainly the consequence of Muslim media. The Muslim press has developed into a kind of protesting type of journalism. Now the electronic media is being used by Muslims towards the same end. Muslim militancy is entirely the upshot of the Muslim community’s anger, disillusionment and negative thinking as portrayed and promoted by Muslim media. It is said that the greatest menace of present times is the radicalization of Muslim youth. But the question is: What is the source of this radicalization? The source of this culture is the use by Muslims of the internet and social networking as an extended form of Muslim media. Muslims have easy access to an international network—the internet and are using it on a vast scale. Thus they have filled their websites on the internet with reports which show that Muslims are an imperiled community. This outreach of the social media is there in everyone’s pocket in the form of mobile devices. Muslims today have coined a new term, that is, Islamophobia. This refers to the danger wrongly perceived by the West that Islam presents to non-Muslims. However, this is not actually the case. Muslims have adopted the culture of violence in the name of Islam. In this sense, the West is right to consider Muslims to be dangerous. The right word would be “Muslimophobia”. Yet Islam, in itself, is a great blessing from God for the whole of humanity. In view of the present situation, the question is, is there a silver lining? To save young Muslims from this negative culture, an extensive campaign is required to awaken Muslim minds in such a way that they Terrorism always ends in repentance. Terrorism thus has a self-deterrent characteristic—that is, after engaging in a terrorist act, the extremist immediately realizes that he had erred.