Changed Face of Terrorist

Attack in London was not a surprise at all. It was long expected and according to New York Times London “had been on the cross roads of terrorism for long”. Plus, who can forget Mohammad Gaddafi saying on the eve of Afghanistan bombing that “US should bomb London rather than Kabul”. The growing population of Islamic community in Britain had been headache for most of the government around the world, now; it is going to be big headache for British government too. I was reading an interesting column about the attacks in NY Times and the points raised by author definitely needs attention.

Looking at the terrorist profiles in London or New York attacks, we can see that majority of those terrorist are from educated, middle class or upper class families and had decent childhood. Thus, the standard picture of terrorist being poor, uneducated and hailing from isolated and fanatic community is wanting in current terrorists’ profile. Another important feature is bulk of the terrorists comes from Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Pakistan. Two of the above mentioned countries have per capita income very high, 12,000 and 4,500 respectively. And about Pakistan, well, it is hub for terrorist, one stop shopping mall for all terrorist, so it hardly surprising that we find Pakistani nationals regularly on terrorist list. Good example would be in last four months, in Iraq, 46 of the 55 suicide bombers were Saudi nationals.

The terrorist who blew themselves along with 55 innocent people in London were born and brought up in England. They had far more opportunities to succeed in life than their ‘brethren’ in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet, they chose to die for some flimsy reason. That shows that the Islamic community should start reforming themselves rather blaming the rest of the world for their social backwardness. I am not saying that everyone should advance according to western standard and it would be most welcome to set the standards of development according to their society. But harming no one and killing no one for some stupid reason is something, which is an unwritten rule.

Flow is a nature’s phenomenon. Defying that and sticking to something that happened almost 1400 years does not make sense. There are number of ways to reform the system without deviating from the central path and without loosing the crux. It will be most welcome effort for whole world.