The issue of terrorism and all its fallouts has been attributed to extremism and militancy related to Islam. Among billions of Muslims a small group due to certain internal and external factors has taken up arms against their real and assumed enemies. But all the Muslims in the world are blamed when it comes to using the term terrorism.
Todays terrorism is not an outcome of one day or few months. It has a certain background, environment, influence and provocations. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are mostly viewed as not justified even by the West as there are no solid grounds established to take such steps of trampling on the sovereignty of other nations. Besides this reason, the other main cause of violence, anger, and frustration is the messages conveyed through the video games, literature and movies. Switch to any English channel there are four to five movies a day and majority of them have scenes of violence and extremism. The Rambo series and others propagated violence and terrorism.
Even now the movies are more violent and against the norms of humanity when human beings are slaughtered in brutal ways. What purpose do such actions serve? Todays terrorism is not that it just sprung up from one factor or incident. These movies which today show extremists and terrorists and ways of violence are all responsible for developing and setting a trend towards crime and later terrorism.
We are responsible only because we were not able to ban such material which causes frustration, and anxiety leading to criminal attitude among the youth. But the negative role played by the videos, literature and movies of the West should not be ignored. The blame game has to be stopped as the West is also a partner in todays problems that we are facing. The responsibility needs to be shared and perpetuators of terrorism to be checked and controlled if all of us are really sincere to overcome terrorism.
ANWAR PARVEEN
Rawalpindi
