The Courage of Non-Violence

What turned a cheerful, fluffy-haired teenager into the world’s most wanted terrorist who evaded capture for ten years? In one opinion, it was a belief, an idea, a fundamentalist ideology that took over the life of Osama Bin Laden and led him into waging “holy war”. He and his followers were convinced that by terrorist acts of violence, the Arab world would rebel against their pro-western dictators and tyrants and establish Islamic states of the strictest kind. So he build up a terrorist organization, Al-Qaida, and going against everything that true Islam taught, they tortured, bombed, killed, maimed and committed mass murder. They brought down the twin-towers, bombed trains and buses and killed innocents and yet there was no mass uprising. Al-Qaida remained an extremist group that attacked Western and Islamic states like Pakistan where as many as 30,000 people have been killed.

It took the self-sacrificing immolation of a poor street vendor who had suffered enough harassment and humiliation and the confiscation of his vegetable cart by corrupt police to ignite the long buried anger and frustration of the Tunisian people and eventually, in a few months, the people of the Middle East. One after another, they courageously took to the streets in mass protests, marches and demonstrations to bring down the dictator and win the most cherished freedom of all - the freedom of choice. They did it non-violently, just waving fists and shouting for change. They stood unarmed, bravely against batons, tear gas and live bullets to win their right to choose the way they want to live and elect whom they want to govern them. They wanted democracy.

In the Middle-East, the Arab people have risen up with an unquenchable desire for freedom and dignity. That is what drives them to the streets and keeps them there with courage and bravery to face down the guns and tanks. In Syria, as I write, scores of people are being shot and hundreds of bodies pile up. They have been brutally killed by the Syrian army to keep a terrorist loving dictator and family dynasty in power. The slaughter of civilians in Syria and Libya is indeed a great crime against humanity.

The ideology of death, hate, revenge and holy war that is the driving force of Al-Qaida was ignored by the peaceful, non-violent people-power mass uprising that has swept aside the pro-western tyrants of Tunisia and Egypt and is challenging the rulers of Bahrain, Yemen, Syria and Libya. It is of immense relief to all other peace-loving nations that the people’s movement for freedom is not driven by religious extremism. Should extremists ever come to power in a country like Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons, that would be a matter of grave concern. The reality is that most of the protestors are true Muslim believers and they have no interest in extreme Islamic ideology. They have chosen non-violence. It must be like a knife in the heart of the Al-Qaida movement. The people are calling for democracy and a more open moderate Muslim society, not a strict Islamic state.

Osama Bin Laden was portrayed as the self-sacrificing holy warrior that his followers and most of the world believed to be heroically enduring the hardship of the battle-field somewhere in the mountains and caves along the rugged and harsh Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Instead of risking his life for the cause, he sent children to their deaths as suicide bombers and young men by their scores to die for nothing. He was discovered in the luxury of a fortified mansion in a rural town of Abbottabad, 150 kilometers North East of the capital Islamabad, so much of a heroic warrior.

What has to be addressed of course is the grave social injustices under the cruel regimes of the Arab dictators. It was their greed and cruel oppression that Bin Laden used to justify his terror attacks. The Western nations wrongly coddled and made deals with these tyrants to advance their own strategic and economic interests in the Middle-east - primarily oil. Now they have to do all to support the people’s struggle against their oppressors and help them achieve freedom and peace.