The directionless war against terrorism

I came across this article that appeared in NY Times on the futility of the rationale of using terror over an unlimited period to check terrorism.

There have been several advocates of how the entire arrogant and 'me the saviour of the world' attitude is rife with contradictions and deep limitations.

Wendell Berry in a way predicted this state when he expressed his discontent on the National Security Strategy of Bush way back in 2002 through this piece of thought. Another one is articulated in thoughts in the presence of fear.


Think advocates of peace like Mahatma Gandhi and several others will continue to live as we continue to suppress their ideas day in and day out.

For want of a symbol?

Whenever I read about terrorist activities being perpetrated in the name of religion and specifically when it comes from Islam, I get intrigued whether a presence of a religious symbol that would have depicted peace and love would have been of any value for people who really can't understand abstract thoughts.

Abstract thinking such as internalizing the subtleties of universal brotherhood are really not easy concepts for a raw mind. Its very very difficult to go beyond the confines of the structures and historical events that impose a certain kind of perspective on the minds of people. While just emulating the symbol in some form can help in a very simple way.

Certain religious symbols inspire a certain kind of virtue. Eg. the deep stillness and highest form of sacrifice in  Jesus's image encourages one atleast not to ignore these values if not emulate them on a daily basis. Similarly, Buddha's image in meditation inspires the need for internal deep dive. In Hinduism, Lord Krishna's image goes to a large extent in encouraging the virtue of dharma and prosperity- (though the latter ideal is what is generally seen to be understood by the simple minded and the former conveniently ignored).

At times I would say that if the image doesn't inspire the actual act it surely challenges the contrarion line of thinking. For example not all Christians may believe in sacrifice and surely not in living a life of non-materialism but the symbol would surely contest any feeling on the contrarion side, of say killing others in the name of religion. Similar would be the case with symbols of other religions. Which means that just because Hinduism has symbols doesn't imply that all Hindus embrace love and peace. But surely it mitigates and challenges people who want to perpetrate violence in the name of religion.

While when we look at Islam, we find that being a monotheistic religion, it differs from Christianity in not having any symbol of worship. I would surely want to understand the reason of this design but I wonder if some symbol signifying the virtues of love, unity and universal peace would have done some good to the raw minds of terrorists and in turn impacted the larger world in several positive ways.

Why should Terrorism matter to us?

I am nowhere related to influencing policies on terrorism at this stage and neither can I do much beyond reading about terrorism whenever there is reporting of some facts or some fervent expression of thoughts through editorials in newspapers.

At the same time, lately I have realized that the concept of terrorism has multifarious levels of demensions which range from local politics, international politics, historical equations, law and order, lack of education, religion, poverty to name some of those aspects leading to actions routed in mindless violence.

The other reason why i feel understanding of terrorism is critical for any individual who is otherwise not connected to the problem directly is to look at how the phenomenon is shaping our thoughts about identities and how the same get translated from one generation to the other.

Just as a singular thought, what would be the impression born by a 16 year old child after reading through or experiencing these elements since the time he/she took birth. How would these thoughts influence the decisions of the child in the years to come? How would the adult in him/her relate to people from specific communities?

Who takes the responsibility?

In my future expressions on the subject, I would like to talk from the point of view of various aspects of terrorism as I get to dive deep into the subjects not through any focussed time bound effort but as a need to understand the problem and its ramifications on the society to a greater degree of detail through general exploration of the subject.