As the morning dawned, and my twitter feed was abuzz with Paris, scrolling down woke me up from sleep. Another terrorist attack. Another after Baghdad, Beirut and countless other Middle Eastern countries who have been the target of violence by ISIS.
I was sad, angry and feared for what might come next. No, not from ISIS but the backlash. I was guilty too. My first instinct was to tweet or put up a Facebook status to condemn it. Tell the world about how “Terror has no religion” and free my conscience like the countless other Muslims out there on Social Media. Yet, before doing that itself, I was feeling guilty.
No, not because it was the “Islamic State” terrorists and the fact that I’m a Muslim too, but something else.
I feel guilty that it has become a “regular” news for me to see Middle Eastern countries being torn apart and thousands being killed and yet it doesn’t bother me much, unless there is media coverage. I know, like many others, people are dying. Yet, this Paris shooting affects me more and pushes me to write something than those innumerable ones in other countries with less white population. I am guilty.
It’ll be a pretty lame excuse to say,” Why the world is selectively outraging over this?”, because it defeats the purpose. We can argue that there isn’t media coverage given, but if we wanted to raise issues, who is stopping us? But the truth is, unless it truly affects us, we don’t give a damn.
There have been countless bombings in Middle Eastern countries by people whom we do not refer to as Terrorists. Superpowers who actually created and harbored these organizations for their own benefit, forgetting the fact that it can come back to bite them. Or that was the intention all along?
I don’t even have a count of the number of people who have suffered. Can you imagine the “Islamists” killing Muslims? The number is more than Non-Muslims. And yet somehow these are the people with whom the world associates Islam with. Not with the Muslim victims, many of whom are seeking shelter away from their homeland, people who are driving them away, and who have somehow started representing “Islam” for the world and many of its’ Islamophobics.
There is no point in telling that “I condemn the violence” in those many words, because the people who understand, “that for terrorists, it doesn’t matter which religion you follow”, won’t need it.
People who understand that “Terror has no Religion”, won’t need your condemnation. Those, the ones who need, won’t try to understand this.
One cannot imagine the pain of the people who have died. Apart from expressing solidarity, we cannot do anything. Do a little symbolism by sharing pictures, changing facebook DPs and then we’ll get back to our lives. People who created these monsters wouldn’t want this instability to end.
Terrorism has this habit of uniting people together into condemning it, but it is that vicious circle of terror which refuses to end. Apart from praying, we just cannot do anything than remain mute spectators.
This poem was being circulated on Social Media and wanted to share this as well. Pray for the World by Karuna Ezara Parekh
So, let us pray for the world to save us from monsters who do these heinous crimes as well as the ones who create them.
“Whoever kills a an innocent Human, it is as though he has killed the entire humanity” ~ Quran.