Once upon a time, young boys aspired to become top athletes or movie stars, and girls were desperate to have signed photos of their heroes on their bedroom walls. Today, some young Muslim men have ditched the dream of becoming movie stars and instead have opted to become martyrs.
Why?
What makes able-bodied, single, young men, mainly in their early twenties, give up the promise of a future on earth and opt for a place in heaven through what they understand as jihad?
Perhaps they lead such miserable lives that all they can hope for is the good of the afterlife. The mullahs promise them that they will be rewarded if they die fighting the disbelievers. But how can one hope for God’s pleasure when one has killed innocent women, children and non-combatants?
What are their circumstances at home? Do they think that all is lost, and they are simply drifting along, with no job and no prospect of uplifting their lives or the lives of their families? How has society failed them?
Two men recently became the 16th and 17th Malaysians to die for the Daesh when they detonated their bombs and killed 33 people, including 12 police recruits. They were 26-year-old Mohd Amirul Ahmad Rahim of Terengganu and 31-year-old Mohd Syazwan Mohd Salim of Selangor, who recruited his younger brother, Shazani, to fight alongside him in Syria. Shazani was killed in a suicide mission last September.
Syazwan’s neighbours expressed surprise. They said he and his brother were normal young men, nice and friendly. What? These terrorists were surely not stupid enough to show their violent tendencies to their neighbours. Who would you befriend? A violent person or a charming young man who wouldn’t hurt a fly? So don’t be fooled. They were sleeping terrorists whose aim was to blend in. They would not have wanted to draw attention to themselves.
Don’t for one minute imagine that all terrorists are going to be loud, offensive gun-toting desperadoes. They do not display psychotic or violent tendencies. Many studies in fact show that they tend to be quiet and timid and that their main problem is communication. They have one disturbing flaw, if one can call it that. They do not display any fear when they launch their attacks because they have been given a cocktail of drugs.
Call them Daesh terrorists, not “Islamic State” fighters. Daesh terrorists kill innocent people, maim others and inflict damage for their warped ideology. They rape non-Muslim women, throw homosexuals off tall buildings, encourage children to behead those whom they deem as traitors, and enslave old women and children.
These people have nothing to do with Islam. They are not a state, nor do they have a caliphate. So don’t give them legitimacy by calling them Islamic State (IS) warriors.
Just call them Daesh or Da’ish, which is a loose acronym for the group’s Arabic name, al-Dawla al-Islamyia fil Iraq wa’al Sham (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant). Daesh sounds like the Arabic words daes (“one who crushes something underfoot”) and dahes (“one who sows discord”).
After Thursday’s terrorist attacks in Jakarta, BN Strategy Director Abdul Rahman Dahlan urged the rakyat to help empower the government to handle terrorism and support the government’s National Security Bill. He said, “Terrorism is a serious global issue. Here in Malaysia it can undermine our security. Help to empower the government to handle this. Support #POTA #NSC.”
No! Don’t allow the government to use the fear of terrorism as an excuse to bring in the NSC. The NSC will be used against the rakyat, not the terrorists. Instead, the government should come down hard on those who show religious intolerance, whip up racist and religious hatred and threaten national harmony.
Curbing the extremism that threatens our unique Malaysian way of life is good enough for starters. We have enough laws to apprehend terrorists, but very little is done to censure Muslims who force us down the slippery slope towards more violence, supposedly with the aim of defending Islam.
Mariam Mokhtar is an FMT columnist.