I extend the message of peace towards you, the same message that my religion propagates, the same message that you miserably failed to understand, the same message your mindset negates.
At first, I did commit the mistake of calling you by your name when referring to the attacker who gunned down 50 innocent people in Christchurch. But then I heard New Zealand’s premier JacindaArdern vowing to deny you the notoriety you yearn for and, instead, to keep you nameless. And I could not agree more with this approach.
Nobody cares about what your name is or how ‘angelic’ your childhood was. All we want is you to be identified as a criminal, a killer, and a terrorist. Your name can find many synonyms in all nationalities, ethnicities and religions. And that is the key point – terrorism does not belong to any colour or creed.
The weapon you used to execute your plan had several names and messages written on it. But the list was surely incomplete, for you would have fallen short of space had you mentioned the name of every terrorist who has taken one or more innocent lives in the name of glorifying a religion, an ideology or a nation. It has always been you pointing a gun at a person who was unaware of his crime for which he was about to be punished. Sometimes you had donned military fatigues, sometimes a black cloak over white shalwarkameez; your chin can be clean-shaven or bearded;you can be a white supremacist Christian or a brown extremist Muslim; no matter what identity you choose for yourself and how you choose to appear in front of the world, your mind and soul,along with those from your ‘kin’, nurture the same extremist ideology that justifies decimating a population for your belief system’s integrity.
And irrespective of your victims’ appearances, the last words gushing through one’s mind are always the same: “What have I done to deserve this?”
“I know that the people who did this knew well enough how profoundly defenseless their victims were in that moment. This is a congregational prayer that happens every week like clockwork. This was slaughter by appointment
In simpler words, you believe in exterminating one ideology for supremacy of your own by annihilating the followers of the former. But in the midst of formulating this strategy of ‘revenge’, you become oblivious to the fact that those who started off this game of numbers of corpses in the first place were: a) as extremist as you; b) as dissociated from the ideology they pretend to represent as you. To begin with, no such term as ‘Muslim extremist’ or ‘Christian extremist’ should exist. Second, your gambit of supremacy affects only the innocent who are following their beliefs in true meaning. Thus, you simply cannot claim to be the flagbearer of your community, whether based on colour, caste or creed. You represent only one ideology and that is of terrorism.
I won’t say you have failed in your mission. Your mission was to cause terror and you have, indeed, succeeded in that. You have terrified a major chunk of people. People like me do have faith in God’s plan but are frightened about their and their beloveds’ future.
I am a daughter who is afraid of losing her father and facing the hardships of life before they are due. I am a sister who prays for the well-being of her brother every day and wants to see him grow into a successful man. I am a wife who does not want to bring up her children alone and who is concerned about the future of her family unit. I am a mother who prefers dying over attending her son’s funeral, an example of which is the Jordanian woman who was so grief-stricken that she passed away from heart attack a few hours before the funeral of her son who was killed in the Christchurch attack.
But this fear is here to stay and cannot be dealt with. Australian writer and media presenter Waleed Aly aptly articulates the concern: “I know that the people who did this knew well enough how profoundly defenseless their victims were in that moment. This is a congregational prayer that happens every week like clockwork. This was slaughter by appointment. And scary because like millions of other Muslims I am going to keep attending those appointments. And it feels like fish in a barrel.”
The only weapons that we have for our defence are determination and hope… ‘Determination’ to stick to our beliefs and principles and continue to be slain… ‘Hope’ to see a time when no guns would be pointed at the innocent.
“I know that the people who did this knew well enough how profoundly defenseless their victims were in that moment. This is a congregational prayer that happens every week like clockwork. This was slaughter by appointment