Yesterday, my city, the place of my birth and childhood, was bathed in blood and tears. Deep wounds were inflicted, during an overnight orgy of brutality and violence, in a stunning degradation of all things sacred we have ever held dear. For 13 hours the nation watched, helpless, petrified, and terrorized.
The victims: They were one of us
Reports that emerged first read '20 foreigners killed in terrorist attacks in Dhaka'. Even as the standoff was diffused, the narrative remained the same - ISIS militants have specifically targeted foreigners in Gulshan area, the diplomatic zone of my city. Its reiterations had reverberated worldwide by last night, when I get a call from a friend abroad. He says 'I am sorry to hear it man. A tragedy. Although it is not a direct tragedy for Bangladesh, really.'
Really? Did it really make a difference? I told him how confused we were all feeling about what had just happened. Does it have to matter that apparently no Bangladeshi's were killed in the attack? Is it not tragedy enough that it is happening at all? That it is in my neighborhood? That my family and friends frequent that same cafe all the time? It would not have mattered, even if there were no Bangladeshis among the victims.
But of course, there were. And they were one of us. We went to the same schools. We have common friends and families. She was a friend's niece. He was my cousin's friend's son. She was an uncle's granddaughter. Whoever I was speaking to, were saying the same thing - they were one of us. And the souls lost that night that had come from foreign lands, who were friends of our nation, and lovers of our people, they were also one of us.
While the reports were pouring in, murking up sentiments by framing the issue as 'foreigners attacked in Dhaka', I was slowly realizing that the cheery notion that it is somehow not Bangladesh's tragedy was a fallacy. The boundaries are no longer clear, the lines are all blurred. Because, if they were not, then maybe Faraaz Hossain (who was given a chance to leave by the attackers, but refused to abandon his foreign friends) would have still been alive today.
The terrorists: They could have been one of us
Yet again, somehow the predominant narrative tends to leave the story too neat to be true. We have seen it before - a sensationalist media pushes a polarized narrative, with distinct protagonists and antagonists, and a picture of the situation often colored by past expectations. It leaves one feeling like the lines are solid, the boundaries are defined - that there is an 'us' and there is a 'them'. But it is when such a tragedy comes home, that you realize, there are no such lines in the sand.
They could have been any one of us. They were born and raised in the same soil that we all did, to parents who could have been just like ours. They grew up the same way we did. They went to the same schools we went to, taught by the same teachers we had. They have celebrated Eid and Pohela Boishakh as we do. And they rejoiced with the whole nation, every time our cricket team has made us proud, when our mountain climbers have conquered Everest, and when our nation brought home the Nobel Prize.
Yet, like a flick of a button, in a chilling example of the fragility of the human psyche, these are the same sons of the soil who decided to defile the womb of their motherland - their sin, else's blood.
The 'Powers': Cowards in the shadows
Ideology is the poison in the mix. While social and spiritual disillusionment of youth, are being used as fertile soil for the instigation of these heinous acts. A combination of ideology and confusion have always been used by the powerful as a means to veer, steer and manipulate the powerless. The plague upon our species now is this insidious evil, falsely couched in the name of Islam. It is perpetuated by an ideology that is essentially anti-human and singularly self aggrandizing. And it has morphed into being in our world today like a mutated cyst, rotting and gangrenous, finding fuel in the sins and mistakes of our species' past.
To those who seek power through the blood of innocents - you will not win. Allah, in whose name you commit your sins, has placed us on this earth to transcend our bestial natures and to embrace our angelic. Your program is essentially a call to return to the animal. It is born out of hate, cowardice and a fundamental fear you have of facing the real reason why you are on this earth. From where I can see, you are standing directly in conflict with nature's intent for our species. To that end, your enemy is not the West. It is nature itself.
Echoes in the Night:
We need to smarten up, very very fast. The species is suffering from a crisis of consciousness.
Every human being is born into this earth to make sense of life as a whole, and their own life as a part of it. Each one of us go through our own spiritual crisis and confusion in one way or another. But when evil begins to manipulate the spiritual confusion of our kids for its own gains, we must begin to take seriously our role in the spiritual growth of our children.
It is no longer enough, to simply repeat vacuous words from the holy books to them, to simply comply with the societal contract of having a religious identity. We can no longer ignore the need for spiritual guidance that we all have. Neither can we simply pretend to meet that need by making our kids go to the mosque, read the Koran, not have sex before marriage, not be gay etc. We need to take responsibility for our actions and our words. We need to stop lying to our kids, to use the fear of hell to scare them to submission. And most of all, we need to admit to them the truth that we ourselves are afraid to face - the truth that nobody can and will ever understand with certainty the mystery of life, the planet and the universe. Not us, not them, and especially not those who perpetuate these attacks on humanity.
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