Terror! Can you nip it in the bud?

When I watch the news about all these terrorists attacking innocent people, I cannot help but think about them as humans first. I ask myself this question, “Were they born this way? Has their purpose always been killing people?” Probably not. Prima facie, what they are doing is barbaric, but something inside them is driving them to do so. We are all humans, after all; we know how we function. If a terrorist or a murderer has the mission of killing people, somebody has written the blueprint. There are back stories to these people. When I think of possible circumstances to why they act in the way they do, I can think of poverty, helplessness, fanaticism, greed, and blind-faith, as few of the reasons for a person to commit to such instances. Terrorism does not come with an individual objective always. Sometimes, it is someone else controlling these terrorists. And the people killing first-hand are merely under an influence because they don’t know otherwise.  

Terrorism is a far broader concept than what people think it is. Terrorism is not all guns and blood. If I ask you right now, what you believe terrorism is? Your words might involve killing, weapons, deaths, mass attacks, vandalism and such activities. But isn’t misguiding people, taking advantage of their beliefs, their poverty, also terrorism? Think about it. It harms people. It shapes their mind through manipulation. Terrorists are living around us, in our societies. These God-Men create the fear of uncertainty in people. That too is a terror. People are “influenced”; their weaknesses are used to manipulate them. Majorly, people who are poor, or people looking for something to get obsessed with, to get extreme about, are the ones easily shaped or influenced into doing something which impacts people on a mass level.

Some people may be mentally disturbed or mentally ill, due to which they are looking for a purpose. Terrorists with mental illness may not even know what they are doing; they act on what they have been asked to do. The media do not present these perspectives. There are a lot of sides to a story and to solve an issue, we need to get down to understanding all the possible sides of the issue.

It is almost beyond belief for me that kids have started shooting guns in schools. Mass murders are being committed. Why would they do something like that? It is not like a kid wakes up one morning and sets on a mission to kill people. That is not a regular Tuesday in a kid’s life. It builds up with time - whatever the reason maybe - hatred, disturbance, rage, anger. Kids don’t snap into becoming mass murderers. Mass killing or killing, in general, is not something easy; a person in a correct state of mind will not do something like this. Recently, kids have started to shoot, create fear, and kill in schools. What did they see, or go through, or what is it they have been around, which influenced them to do this?  And oh yes! That also reminds me of the ‘blue whale’ video game that challenged young minds to do activities as serious as suicide! So are not the makers of that game terrorists?  

Speaking of terrorism in various forms, there has been evidence of terrorists receiving funds by politicians, describing relations between terror and vested interests of politics. So who is the leading terrorist here? In my opinion, the people in the act are victims of the terrorists that hold their strings as in a puppet show.

And the solution to this lies in the roots of influence — the one answer to this education. Sadly, some of the terrorists are educated too. So let’s say - with the right knowledge and training, the youth can make a better tomorrow. The teachers’ community can make a massive difference by shaping the minds of students. Teachers know better than anyone else, how to train a child into a responsible individual.

Education is a subject close to my heart, and to every wrong that hurts, right knowledge is the answer.

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