Extremism and Terrorism

The following is an essay written by me about Extremism and Terrorism which has been extracted from my book - The Universe - A Personal View ( page 236 to 240 )

Link to my book :-  https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxqa2hjbGlmZXN0eWxlfGd4OjM5NmM2NTViMjAzY2M5MTk

Extremism and Terrorism

One of the greatest evils in our world at the present moment is undoubtedly terrorism. It can strike anywhere and at any time without any warning and everyone can be a victim. This is the worst characteristic of terrorism. Its sole aim is to instil fear into every aspect of our daily lives in the hope of succeeding in disrupting or forcing us to change our preferred way of life. The worst scenario is that we are led to changing our principles regarding justice and common sense by taking drastic measures or over react to the intended threat by treating everyone as a possible terrorist thereby becoming as inhuman as the terrorists themselves. If this happens, the terrorists would have achieved their evil purpose. To me, terrorism is merely cowardice in disguise. Whatever the alleged reason for carrying out terrorist acts it cannot white wash the true nature of terrorism which is the heartless venting of one's frustration and anger ( another most destructive form of cardinal sin ) on precious, innocent and helpless lives. If they are man enough, terrorists would only have targeted the powerful military machine or the idiotic politicians who are accused of perpetrating the alleged original crime that calls for retaliation. Not that I am in support of taking revenge and the law into our own hands. However evil the alleged crime is or however noble is the end of so-called doing justice, it can never justify the evil means of terrorism for all our actions must always be subject to the supreme rule of the Natural Law. How stupid can the argument by the terrorists be when they claim to serve God by the destruction of precious and innocent lives created by the Almighty Himself ? Or for the terrorists themselves to claim that they would be admitted to heaven if they die during the course of their own cowardly act of killing precious and innocent lives ? How do all these stupid arguments square up with the infinitely good and loving nature of God ? Don't they ever read the good Book ? Just to take the Old Testament which most religious people accept. “ Vengeance is Mine ! “ How dare the terrorists ask God to forfeit His divine right to punishment ? Who do they think they are ? The incarnate of the Almighty ? Notwithstanding my emotional outbursts out of

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intellectual rage ( because their foolish arguments have grossly insulted my intelligence ), let me try to analyze the causes of terrorism from which we may learn some useful lessons.
To start with, most terrorists come from underprivileged social groups and they are very likely to have some of their loved ones killed for some political or religious cause usually under unfortunate and violent circumstances. Violence beget more violence and blood shed only leads to endless rounds of senseless slaughter of precious lives. Terrorists are usually members of an extremist sect of a religion that does not accept any other points of view in anything except in accordance with their own religious or political dogma. Extremism breeds terrorism because the former justifies its means by whatever end it has set its eye upon. The latter is the inevitable result. And once its target is set, it is a one way ticket to everlasting damnation for extremism has the narrowest of all perspectives like a frog trapped at the bottom of a well. The sky to the frog is but a small circle of light. What a big pity for the frog because it is such as vast and colourful world out there for everyone to enjoy in haromony except for the frog that is ! Such unfortunate background may even arouse sympathy if not for the destructive results arising from its bitter fruits. Now the world can never go back to its peaceful good old days again because of the emergence of terrorism.

Of course, this is only a typical profile for a terrorist and there are other contributing factors to make a real life terrorist. Injustice is on the top of the list of contributory factors to terrorism. We seldom come across a wealthy terrorist who actually becomes a martyr himself. If ever a wealthy extremist is the master mind behind some terrorist plot, it is only financial or moral support that the wealthy extremist will offer. He would never have risked his own life because for all the extreme and vocal slogan of a holy war against the so-called infedels the wealthy extremist knows better than put his own life at risk for fear of sacrificing his own earthly pleasures. It is all a matter of big and empty talk but nothing much else. As the famous Chinese saying goes :- “ The wise man uses his mouth while the idiot uses his hand to strike at his enemies. “ Of course, you will appreciate that it is the idiot that will get hurt while the wise man gets his honour without risking his life. As statistics have shown, all those terrorists who got killed as martyrs are from poor families who have received what the Chinese aptly called “ family settlement money “ before venturing upon terrorist acts such as in the 9/11 attack on the twin World Trade Towers in New York City back in September 11, 2001. The amounts involved were reported to be a mere US$9,000 for some. Had there been a more equitable distribution of income and wealth in the world in general, there would not have been anyone who were willing to die for such meagre sums of money even though an extremist religious or political view may still be a possible motive for terrorism. Therefore, one way of rooting out terrorism in a substantial manner would be the worldwide promotion of social justice. But this must be done with genuine international co-operation and not simply by lip service of some international organization such as the United Nations. This is a very pressing issue because social injustice is the root to all kinds of evils and terrorism is but one of the bitter fruits of social inequity.

Then, there is the second problem of the uncompromising attitude adopted by some developed countries notably the USA to pitch military and financial might against terrorism and its related violence. Such policy as that adopted by the current US president, George W. Bush - “ if you are not with us, you are against us “ - will definitely lead to further polarization of the opposing forces of terrorism and western global influence. Such an uncompromising attitude inevitably leads to the extensive use of military force and collateral damages in terms of losses in innocent civilian lives that breed even more terrorists. It is simply a case of a vicious circle where violence begets more violence. In some sense, these two seemingly unrelated activities of terrorism and western global influence do have at least one common quality which is the attempt by one group of people to impose their values on the rest of the world out of greed and ignorance. The former vice is connected to globalization through the workings of profit-crazy mega corporations and the latter vice is the hallmarks of terrorism ( and extremism ) through their ignorance of the precious nature of life and the workings of the natural law. While terrorism resorts to violence and the killing of the innocent to impose its evil will on the rest of the world globalization uses economic and financial forces ( which can be equally

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violent in the economic sense in destroying existing life styles of the underprivileged – does this not sound like the definition of the international crime of economic and ethnic clansing ? ) to open up markets for the stronger economic powers. You may think that my view on this issue tends to be a bit radical but carrying out total globalization to its logical conclusion is tantamount to subjecting the whole world to the tyranny of money. Little has been said about improving the quality of life of the underprivileged people both on the materialistic and spiritual levels in any concrete and substantial terms. Environmental protection is yet another casualty of globalization. The former problem is very often bypassed or reduced to secondary priority in the earnest pursuit of globalization. There is just too much emphasis on the maximization of the utility and effecicency of economic resources which in the short term simply translates into more profits for the mega corporations and, worse still, mostly for the corporate custodians. I have yet to find any effective control measures being taken on the crooked corporate custodians against the abuse of their powers out of greed. For one thing, I am of the opinion that crooked corporate custodians and dirty politicians are strange bed fellows. They have a very turbulent relationship. The former need the latter to carry out policies in their favour and the latter need the former for their powerful financial support to stay in power. But somehow, even the dirty politicians have to pick on the crooked corporate custodians once in a while to make a mock fight against corporate greed to shore up their opinion polls. I really think that there can be no genuine control of the crooked custodians by the dirty politicians. It is just like asking a naughty child to keep a greedy candy seller away from other children for their better health. It will never work. It is not by polarization but dialogue instead that any dispute can be satisfactorily settled. I earnestly wish that the leaders of world powers such as the USA could acquaint themselves with more oriental philosophy of compromise and a holistic approach to any urgent global issues such as terrorism instead of adhering to the Rambo or John Wayne cowboy spirit that can spell sure disaster for mankind.

The third cause contributing to terrorism is, in my opinion, radical and extremist political or religious doctorines. Going into all the extreme and fundamentalist religious views will take endless volumes of history and philosophy books. Suffice it to say that all such views and doctorines are the results of misguided opinions. In short, it is again the cardinal sin of ignorance of the workings of human nature and of nature herself that is at root of the problem. When it comes to prejudice and bigotry, common sense is thrown out of the window. In the context of TOEL which is heavily based on scientific theories, I would simply draw the reader's attention to the relevance of the invariant rules of Chaos and Complexity. The primary precaution is not to initiate any unnecessary action that may lead to unpredictable consequences as all human beings are chaotic in behaviour. Therefore, resorting to force in settling disputes is to be avoided at all costs. The only sensible approach to fighting extremism and, ultimately terrorism is the long term process of educating the younger generation and re-educating the current generation wherever possible in the virtues of forgiveness and compassion for all life in order to disentangle the existing complex emotional knots of destructive hatred and obssession for vengeance in the hope of a better tommorrow. But in order to achieve this ideal situation, there has got to be a stop right away to all the killings and revenge killings that are ongoing. There had been some silver linings in the dark clouds of war between Israel and her Arab neighbours back in the 1977 when then Israeli prime minister, Menachem Begin and Egyptian president signed a peace deal, the first ever in the Middle East. Unfortunately, the Egyptian President Mohammed Anwar el Sadat who was responsible for this historic breakthrough in the Middle East peace process was subsequently assasinated in 1981 by Muslim fundamentalist elements in his army and this tragic episode signalled the gradual reversion of the peace process back to increased hostilty between Israel and other Abrab nations. Since then, the Middle East crisis has deteriorated from bad to worse and is now at an ever expolsive edge. It is the eleventh hour and unless we all co-operate fully to put a stop to the ongoing madness the end of the world will become a frightening reality in the not too distant future as the extremist regimes are able to get hold of the destructive power of nuclear fission. Barring that, our quality of life will deteriorate further down the path to constant fear and insecurity for our
very own existence.

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Now let me describe to you my own personal experience in acts of terror and how I tried to deal with them. I would now take the reader back to the times of the Cultural Revolution in communist China during the decade from 1966 to 1976 ( the year when the Chinese leader Mao Tse-Tung passed away ). I was not a red guard then but just a peaceful secondary school student preparing for entry into the university in Hong Kong in the matriculation class. The Cultural Revolutin overflowed from China across the border into the British Crown colony in the form of general strikes by leftist workers unions and violent demonsrations by subversive elements bankrolled by the same unions with a view to toppling the imperialist colonial British Hong Kong government. At the height of the unrest which lasted for over six months home-made bombs were planted by leftists radicals in public places and on public transports to instil fear into the general population. Such bombs were at first ridiculed by the British and Hong Kong governments as nothing more than large firecrackers but they did subsequently kill a few unsuspecting policemen who handled suspicious objects or ' pineapples “ as they were used to be called without due care and proper protection. Even one experienced police ballistic expert was maimed by a premature explosion suffering the loss of one of his arms. A sense of desperation and insecurity prevails in the whole of society and many daily routines like public transport and social and cultural activities are badly disrupted. We, the students were allowed to stay home or skip class if public transports were unavailable. To show our disgust for the terrorists and as a sign of defiance, most of our schoolmates used to walk to and from school in the midst of all the mayhem. Whenever we come across a suspicious object that part of the street would be sealed off and all pedestrians would be asked to take shelter behind street signs and pillars while ballistic experts from the police and sometimes the British garrison ( when martial law was at one time declared and night time curfews enforced ) risked their lives to detonate the “ pineapples “. So, there was a certain amount of risks in walking on the streets but we all defied the terrorist threats most of the time. Some innocent citizens had been wounded though none had lost their lives during the 1966-67 riots in Hong Kong by the grace of God. Except there was one outspoken radio news commentator who took a very vocal lead in denouncing the terrorist acts and was murdered by the extremists in an act of arson near his home when he was on his way to work. Some of the even more courageous citizens like my own elder brother joined the Royal Hong Kong Regiment, the Volunteers to patrol the city streets and the secured border with mainland China in full military gears to deter terrorist actvities and to provide some moral and defensive support for the ordinary citizens of Hong Kong who went about their daily business as usual in defiance of this radical communist threat. Therefore, the best way to deal with terrorism is to keep our composure and carry on with our daily routes with caution and as an act of defiance against such evil forces. Never over react which is what the terrorist wants you to do and you would become an extremist exactly like him. If that ever happens the terrorist devil would have won.

Then, there were the cowardly acts of the terrorists which I so vehemently denounced earlier. Our family home in 1966-67 was located at the edge of Kowloon City facing the old Kai Tak International Airport in Hong Kong. We were on the sixth floor of an apartment block that overlooked the main thoroughfare called Prince Edward Road. A lot of terrorist activities occurred along this stretch of the road because many public buses passed along this particular section of the main road on Kowloon side of the colony. It is also a strategic point because it is only 50 metres across from Kai Tak International Airport. This fact made it an ideal place to make a scene and catch the headlines in the newspapers that would in turn become world events if the terrorist acts were spectacular enough. I and other members of my family had witnessed more than a few terrorist plots that involved terrorists paying small children to plant home-made bombs for them in the middle of the thoroughfare to disrupt traffic and to target conscientious transport workers who defied the public transport strike to serve the public by continuing to operate public transports. They used innocent children to carry out their dirty and dangerous job for them. Yes, you have read me correctly. Those heartless and cowardly communist terrorists did turn to innocent youngsters of 9 and 10 years of age to ask the boys to carry out for them what they had considered to be too risky acts of terror which they were not man enough to perform themselves. Such is the low down nature of terrorists. Furthermore, we had time and again seen the terrorists standing behind young

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children from uneducated and poor families originating from the Kowloon walled city and prompting them to throw stones at cars passing by Prince Edward Road. The targeted cars were mostly driven by foreigners as a symbolic gesture of directing the conflict against the western imperialists. As usual, the communist terrorists hid behind the protective wall of the young, innocent and misguided children when they carried out their sordid affairs in the hope that the riot police would be hindered by the concern for the safety of the children to take any lethal action against the terrorists. There you have it. This is the true face of a terrorist. Of coure, the events described above are nothing compared to the horrific destruction of human lives by terrorists today. Nevertheless, the true nature of a terrorist remains unchanged. He is always a coward. He is heartless and ignorant of the reality of nature, human feelings and compassion. In short, he is an ignorant and foolish coward who could have seen the beauty of life but had chosen death and destruction instead. Like the frog trapped at the bottom of the well, the terrorist has condemned himself to eternal darkness and misery both for himself and sometimes for everyone around him.