The war on terror (or the semantic concoction that it actually is) will never be won if the world fails to look beyond Islam and the Muslims for its a etiology. Terrorists exist everywhere – in all religions – among the traditionalists, atheists, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists and idol worshippers, among others.
However, millions of global citizens, especially netizens, are so subjective and parochial that they find extremism nowhere else except in Islam; no thanks to the Western media for the subliminal conditioning which created suitable conditions for this intellectual crisis.
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For instance, the leader of the 969 Movement, a Buddhist terrorist group, Ashin Wirathu, made the front cover of the July 2013 edition of Time, a popular American weekly magazine and globally recognised brand, with the headline ‘The Face of Buddhist Terror’, for spare-heading a series of hate campaigns and provocative speeches that have led to the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya, a Muslim minority group in Burma, also known as Myanmar.
According to a widely circulated UN report, more than 1,000 Rohingya Muslims have been murdered by the Buddhist military in the last 4 months. Over 87,000 of the victims of the pogrom were pregnant women, children and the elderly, who have fled the crisis-ridden region in the last 10 days to neighbouring Bangladesh. Unfortunately, Bangladesh-and much expectedly, Israel-have decided to join Myanmar to play Russian roulette with the lives and property of the hapless Rohingya. While Israel is “helpfully” supplying Palestine-tested and killer-confirmed weapons to Myanmar to continue the killings, Bangladesh is refusing to take thousands of stateless, homeless and helpless Rohingya refugees in, and it is purportedly “helping Myanmar fight phantom Rohingya ‘militants and extremists’”.
Wirathu and fellow hate Buddhist preachers and anti-Muslim extremists were tolerated by Aung San Suu Kyi – 1991 Nobel Peace Prize and Myanmar’s State Counsellor (de-facto Prime Minister) – to commit Armageddon against the most persecuted Muslim minority in the world (according to UN), as payback for the immense support her political party got from the Buddhist terrorists.
San Suu Kyi’s silence, which has been a motivating factor for the 969 Movement and other Buddhist terror groups to spread anti-Islamic hate speech among the Burmese populace, has been condemned and criticised by the peace-loving people of the world, world leaders, international NGOs and even the United Nations, with many calling for her to be stripped of the Nobel Peace Prize.
Nigerian human rights groups, Muslim Awareness International (MAI) and Centre for Global Peace Initiative (CGPI) have called on the United Nations to sanction the Myanmar government for its ignoble silence, refusal to allow proper investigation and complicity in the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya people.
In a statement jointly signed by Comrade Shakiru Yekini and Engr. Atoyebi Abdul Waheed, they also urged the International Criminal Court (ICC) to begin criminal proceedings against Aung San Suu Kyi, Ashin Wirathu and other key players, for what they termed “an act of genocide and crimes against humanity.”
The statement reads, in part: “Some of the persecutions documented by the UNHRC as suffered by the Rohingya include mass gang rape, brutal beating of children, forced disappearances, torture and killings. An official 1982 Myanmar Citizenship Law places restrictions on a number of things against the Rohingya, making life not only difficult but almost impossible to live. These include restrictions on the right of movement, rights to study, work, travel, marry, practice their religion and access health services.”
The ethnic cleansing of Muslims by the Buddhist extremists is not limited to Burma. It cuts across the Buddhist-dominated countries in Asia. In Sri Lanka, Sinhalese Buddhists led by Bodu Sala Sena have carried out series of attacks on Muslim minorities and their property. There have been cases of attacks on Muslims by the Buddhist terrorists in Thailand, the same way the Christian terrorist group, Anti-Balaka, massacred thousands of Muslims and destroyed almost all the mosques in the country, while many Muslims have fled the Central African Republic (CAR) during the country’s age-long civil unrest.
The truth is, no religion supports extremism and terrorism. Like Islam, Buddhism and Christianity are also considered religions of peace, love and tolerance. The violent and inhuman actions of some individuals in the name of these religions should not be a justification to paint them red. This is the reality many westerners and the international media are yet to come to terms with since the 9/11 attacks on the US, 7/7 and 2005 London bombings, which were carried out by terrorist groups in the name of Islam. Consequently, many innocent Muslims have been targeted in series of what could be referred to “Islamohpobic hate crimes”, which have been on the rise in the US since the inception of Donald Trump’s administration.
On Monday, September 11, the United States will commemorate the 16th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The unfortunate incident, which claimed the lives of over 2000 people, changed the US and the world completely. It divided our world into two axes; the free world (led by the US) and the terrorist world (Muslims), and no Muslim wants to be against the free world for fear of being tagged terrorist. The incident changed the perception of many about Islam as a religion of peace, because the attackers, according to the official report, were 19 fanatical Arab hijackers loyal to the late Osamah Bin Laden, the leader of Al-Qaeda Network.
However, many renowned analysts do not accept the official reports, as they believe it was insider job. For example, John Kaminski in his dissertation “The Day America Died” proved that many American leaders not only knew the tragedy was about to happen and did nothing to stop it, but actually participated in the planning and execution of it…”
Be that as it may, I join the good people of the United States of America to mourn their dead and I strongly condemn the attacks. Let it be known today that in Islam, the human soul is precious in the sight of Allah. Hence, it is forbidden to spill it unjustly. I have discussed this extensively in my previous articles. It is equally important that the peace-loving Americans and the world also condemn the US’s selective war on terror which singlehandedly targets Muslims. The attacks on Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and the US proxy war in Syria have wreaked devastating havoc on the Muslim world.
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As part of his war on terror, I still vividly remember how the former President George Bush Jnr. invaded Iraq in 2003, barely two years after launching ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’ which toppled the Taliban government in Afghanistan.. Bush Jnr. used what a Nigerian writer and terrorism expert, Abayomi Mumuni, termed ‘State Terrorism’ in his book, “Global Terrorism and its Effects on Humanity” to attack Iraq with the support of Tony Blair, the former British Prime Minister; the same tactics the State of Israel has been using to terrorise the Palestinians on their land for decades, right under the watch of the US, UN and the international community.
In the two wars, which have cost the two countries (US and Britain) trillions of dollars despite losing their finest armies in the decade-long battle, the US-led coalition soldiers killed millions of innocent Iraqis and brought an end to Saddam’s reign and then, his life. Unfortunately, it became very clear, ten years after the controversial war that Saddam never had Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), as the people of the world were made to believe by their former leaders.
This in turn infuriated many Muslim citizens who became radicalised, realising that the Western leaders deliberately massacred their citizens and destroyed their lands for selfish reasons bordering on the Western dominance agenda of a unipolar One World.
The once relatively peaceful Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria have now become theatres of war, courtesy the US’ selective and subjective war on terror. The spate of suicide bombings in these countries (including Nigeria which experienced the first in 2011 at the Abuja police headquarters), have increased at an alarming rate since the 9/11 incident.
The US’ double-standard foreign policy and unflinching support to the State of Israel have destabilised the peace process in the Middle East, a region mostly populated by Arab Muslims. Interestingly, the same Police State is the supplier of billion of dollars in arms to the ones claiming to be fighting terrorism and the ones accused of financing terrorism. This ugly scenario played out during the now six-year Syrian civil war and the on-going Qatar-Gulf crisis. Until recently, the United States has trained, equipped and funded rebels fighting embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad.
16 years down the line, it will be right to conclude that the US-led war on terror is far from being won. Rather, it has escalated its spread to all parts of the world. It is now glaringly clear that we were all wrong in believing that the death of Osamah Bin Laden and other US-designated terrorists would have brought about relative peace to the world.
The carnage we are witnessing now from religious terrorists such as Daesh (ISIS), the Buddhist 969 Movement and the Right-Wing terrorists are worse than what life was before 9/11. Rather than fighting terrorism in a comprehensive manner, Trump’s country was building its hegemony all along, creating zones of blood and gore all over the world, bleeding others to create and sustain American neo-con consumerism; promoting democracy in some, subjugating it in others; calling for the rule of law in some and jettisoning it in other places, all in its selfish and personal interest.
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