Seventeen Canadians, most of them from immigrant families, have recently been arrested on charges of scheming to create a Canadian 9/11. They allegedly planned, among other things, to behead the Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper.
What they wanted to do is the height of stupidity. They, or their parents, or both, had left their native countries to escape tyranny and poverty. But once in the prosperous West, they soon started romanticizing what had been left behind. They somehow fooled themselves into believing that they were unhappy because of the West. If they really did not like the West, why didn’t they peacefully return to their holy lands instead?
The reality is that the imperatives of their totalitarian religion and culture made them impervious to ordinary human feelings. They were deeply unhappy and envious. Years of social conditioning made them want to blow themselves up. Violence was an admission that they could not break their mental slavery. Their acts expressed their resignation toward life.
But, really, it is not just the Islamic world that is this violent. Violence is the reality of everyday life in most countries outside the West. They all inflict heavy sufferings on their own citizens, although occasionally the Islamic world, because of its beliefs about “infidels,” manages to inflict pain outside its borders. These people live in dysfunctional and abusive societies. There are deep-rooted discords and hypocrisies in their cultures. No wonder they are mostly pathetically poor, despite tremendous opportunities to end poverty and desperation in today’s technically advanced world.
Coming back to the Islamic terrorists, it is often rationalized that they attack American citizens because of America’s worldwide meddling. But why would they attack Canada? By most standards, the Canadian state has been reasonably benign; it has been soft on Islamic activities, even to the chagrin of its mighty neighbor.
The reality is that Islamic attacks on the West have nothing to do with American meddling. The 9/11 kind of suicide- bombers have lived in such a mental and social chaos that they are impervious to the real meaning of “meddling” – not to mention “self-respect,” “integrity” and “pride.” Abuses are everywhere in their cultures, and are accepted as a natural part of life, as much as the existence of the sun and moon. When their minds start understanding what “meddling” truly means, they will resist or, better still, ignore diktats from their fundamentalist leaders and dismantle their corrupt cultures, which give the individual no personal space.
Rightly or wrongl}’, Western meddling, not democraC}T, has introduced some sanity into the conduct of the Eastern rulers. Just a few years back, a Hindu fanatic, the chief minister of the Indian province of Gujarat, Narendra Modi, started a pogrom against the minority Muslims. It was not Indians or Indians’ so-called democracy that eventually stopped the killings, but Western meddling.
Bush and his gang, like other Western politicians and bureaucrats, are reprehensible characters, but let us be fair; you cannot blame them for everything.
