Newsline: Such is the unfortunate volatility of our state that a blast in Peshawar, on any other day, might have been viewed as just another act of terrorism. Bomb blasts have been ubiquitous in Pakistan in the last several years, and this city has been jarred with catastrophic frequency.
Schools have been regularly targeted. Children have been victimised. And the number 134 wouldn’t have shocked a nation that has witnessed the massacre of over 50,000 compatriots in the past decade or so.
So what exactly was it about last month’s Peshawar attack that wrenched the nation’s collective gut like never before? What was it about the calamity that even the founding fathers of Taliban apologists managed to muster enough courage to conjure up the T-word in their rhetorical condemnation?
Children weren’t the collateral damage this time around. They were the target. We’re accustomed to witnessing bomb blasts that take down hundreds. But it’s completely different when a group of terrorists invade a school with the sole purpose of unleashing bullets upon adolescent chests.
The thought of perfectly recognisable bullet-ridden corpses of schoolchildren returning to their parents was too much to take, even for a nation that has become so blasé about terrorism.
Categories: Anti Islam act by Muslims, Arab World, Asia, Counter Terrorism, Pakistan, Terrorism
Jihad is personal struggle for better morality and spirituality and in some legitimate context, it is self defense or defensive war.
Preemptive strike is not Jihad but “Bush doctrine.”
Zia,
You are responding to my earlier comment which you have deleted.
If jihad means “personal struggle for better morality and spirituality”, why does it require the approval of a muhammadan leader before it can be carried out? No less a personality than the former grand mufti of Saudi Arabia said so. The vast majority of muhammadan leaders and scholars support that view.
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See, essentially all Muslim governments over the last 150 years have surrendered to the military might of the West. How long did it take to defeat Saddam Hussain?
It is only Mafia like Mullahs, who resort to terrorism and call it Jihad. This is why I mentioned that for defensive war to be called Jihad there has to be a bonafide government, which has some end game in mind. Not just a bunch of lunatics!
This concept would be similar to “Just war,” in Christianity. I would be the first to acknowledge that both the Muslims and the Christians have abused these concepts. But, for the purists these concepts do exist to study.
When you put this understanding into the equation, you suddenly realize that Islam does not sanction any Jihad with sword in this day and age, as the conditions I suggested do not exist.
Just Jihad with pen, which includes censoring, some of your barrage of biased comments, coming from a mind that fails to acknowledge any good in the Muslims or Islam.
I can name countless Christians that I can agree on numerous issues and work with and I will agree with large portions of the New Testament, like President Jefferson did. Can you name a few well known Muslims that you can agree and work with, at least on some issues? Additionally, can you quote a few verses of the Holy Quran that you find very worth while without a qualifier that these are “copied from the Bible?”
Please keep your comments short and on one issue at a time, so that we will find greater reason to allow your mildly concealed bigotry.