Bad Parenting: Creating Terrorists I

International terrorist from India

Suddenly we have seen a terrorist on international arena from India. We always had home-grown terrorists operating at home, but an international terrorist? Yes, it was a surprise. But is it a surprise that he happens to be Muslim? If there was a poll conducted in India a year ago, asking the respondents- ‘If there is an international terrorist involved in suicide bomb attack in London, and if that terrorist is an Indian, which religion would he be from?’ I think, more than 70% would vote for ‘Muslim’. While Hindus would overwhelmingly vote for ‘Muslim’, I think even some Muslims would have voted for ‘Muslim’. It almost goes without saying that if there is an Indian who wants to do something like that in place like Glasgow or London, it has to be a Muslim. (Its like believing that a mugger in a US city is always Black.)

Why is it like that? Is it the religion or is it something else?

Should we blame Islam?

You might have known by now that I don’t like to blame the religious books and its prophets to solve the immediate problems. All religions have its idiosyncrasies, some more than others. To blame one religion for all evils is like acquitting others. The other reason I don’t like to blame the religion itself for such terrorism is because such blaming doesn’t solve the issue of terrorism. Solving religion and its ills is a long-term problem and solving terrorism is a short-term problem.

When you blame the religion such as Islam and say that its sacred texts actually produce suicide killers, then I should see such suicide killers all through the history of Islam, which is not the case. If it is so unique to Islam, how come we had Japanese kamikazes in WWII?

Also, if indeed we were to actually prove using some long-drawn logic that it is Koran that incites people to blow themselves up for a cause, then what is the solution? It is like saying Science creates destruction through creation of atom bombs. Should we eradicate Science then? Should the people of other religion come together to eradicate Islam and its holy text? Or should we force Islam to shun its holy text because we discovered something dangerous in their texts? Would we do the same to our texts if some ‘other’ religion pointed out sinister interpretations in our texts?

All the solutions which include blaming a single religion for terrorism are untenable and unpractical and hence I do not take much fun in blaming the texts. Instead, I try to look for the practical solutions if there are any.

Now how do you explain this International terrorist coming from a well-educated middle class Indian Muslim family?

I was thinking about it since this incident happened in Glasgow where one Indian Muslim blew himself up in an attempt to blow certain section of the airport there. Everyday newspapers devote copious pages of verbiage on this single incident. But the thought in me remains - what’s happening to Indian Muslims, especially those from well-to-do families who send their kids to mainstream schools just like the rest of us? Here, I try to answer some of my own questions.

Religious Training

Many Indian Muslim parents, including those who are holding normal jobs, and have good education, tend to send their kids to some kind of religious training once the kids reach a certain age. This could be out of peer pressure since everyone around them is doing it or because they want to ascertain their identity in a country where they are a minority (usually many minorities go overboard in expressing their cultural and religious identities – like Indian Hindus in US or UK). Whatever may be the reason these parents do send their kids to a nearby school or mosque that imparts Islam into these young minds. Some well-to-do parents bring home a teacher to impart this training. Note that this is very different with Hindu kids who seem to get their learning indirectly from parents and family around them.

The teacher who is entitled with the task of teaching these young Indian Muslim kids is a maulvi or a mullah working in a nearby mosque or madrassa. Most of these mullahs or maulvis are illiterate. Most of them happen to be rejects of the society whose only claim to something glorious is their ability to rote the Koran. This is not very different from sadhus and other godmen of Hinduism who seem to prey on the naïve devotees to get their livelihood. The difference however is that not many Indian Hindu parents would give such men the responsibility to impart religious teachings to their kids. So, what we have here is a maulvi or mullah who has no formal education, that of science or mathematics, and has little experience of traveling or exposure to other cultures, spending hours teaching your precious little kid with his own version of Islam.

While these Indian Muslim parents take extreme care to choose the best schools for their kids for their mainstream education they seem to settle for almost anything when it comes their religious training. Nobody bothers to check the reputation or credentials of such religious teachers. All questions and doubts are shunned when it comes to the matters of religion and its teachings. In fact, this is not unique to Muslims alone; many Hindus, even the educated engineers and professors seem to abandon rational thinking when it comes to matters of religion – they consult an astrologer to start or begin an important event, and refuse to get their son married at an 'inauspicious' time. While such abandonment of reason is usually harmless, there are times when it is quite harmful. I shall deal with those times when it is indeed harmful.

Organized religious training

There is a big problem with any kind of ‘organized’ religious training. An organized religious training starts with suppression of critical thinking, where questioning is discouraged, and blind belief is encouraged. It is done as an organized tool where indoctrination happens without allowing a debate. A kid who goes through such training is bound to set aside all attributes of critical thinking and logical reasoning that he might have been endowed with through genetic inheritance. He becomes a puppet in the hands of interpreters of religion. These kids learn to be selectively credulous and all-believing in matters of religion, while operating with common skepticism and average reasoning in all other spheres of life. They go to normal schools, attend colleges, do well, become professors, engineers, scientists and doctors, but continue to harbor that selective abandoning of reason when it comes to matters of religion. We see such people everywhere. Scientists doing puja before launching of a rocket; top engineer looking for auspicious time to marry off his daughter; businessman waiting for the star alignment to sign up an agreement, etc.

The first step towards indoctrination

This religious teaching of Islam first starts with complete abandonment of logic and reason. It’s like teaching a kid that Santa Claus visits every home on Christmas night to give presents. How a single person can go to so many homes on a single night traveling on a sled is not something that a kid doubts. Even if he doubts, a reason that Santa is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present would clear up all those doubts. The same happens to organized religious teachings. All questions that a sane and rational man would ask are trounced down using the ‘logic’ of faith, where every question is answered using magic, miracles, omnipotence, omniscience, etc. The kids are compelled to abandon reason and just accept the word of God, as it is, verbatim, in literal translation, without raising a doubt. Raising a doubt is equivalent to being a kafir (infidel – non-believer)- that abominable creature whom God has condemned to be fried and burned in Hell forever.

In such organized religious indoctrination, the fairies become real, parting of ocean becomes real, the magic which any ordinary magician can conjure up becomes ‘real’, blotting out sun becomes real, and creation of Universe in seven days becomes real. The human brain gets wired in a way to become selectively credulous towards topics of religion.

Normally, the kids eventually grow up to become adults abandoning the belief in Santa Claus and Tooth Fairy, but the religion has this capacity to make sure these kids never become adults. They remain credulous forever. To achieve this, the puppet masters resort to all kinds of tricks – catching them young and indoctrinating them is a very famous trick- used by all fanatic movements- including Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin. The very elements of man - creativity, the ingenuity, the quest for knowledge, the curiosity, which are the hallmarks of human evolution to make him an intelligent being, are all thrown out of the door in few years of such religious training. This process arrests all the mental faculties, stops all critical thinking and now these pupils are ready to believe almost anything without asking questions - when it comes to religion.

Second step

What happens next in these teachings is introduction of a fiery and radical version of Islam. Whether the Indian Muslim parents choose to know about it or not, some of these maulvis or mullahs, armed with a very fiery version of Islam, incite violence and hatred, teach these innocent kids a very radical interpretation of Islam. To the already credulous kid, this goes into his head easy since he is ready to accept any version or any interpretation, as long as it is coming from the same source- the authority who will interpret the word of God for him.

This version of Islam includes selective interpretation of Islam using selected texts of Koran, accompanied by selected stories from human histories, added with contemporary injustices to make a dangerous potion- where jihad is the fight against all kafir (infidel) – and those infidels could be anybody- including those Muslims who do NOT subscribe to your version of Islam, where martyrdom through suicide killing is the biggest achievement giving you a direct ticket to jannat (heaven) wherein you get access to 72 virgins. Hatred is the word to describe this entire teaching- Hatred of others. And those others can be anybody- it could be a Hindu or a Christian, or even other kind of Muslim. That’s why you see the same hatred and ferociousness in the attack between Sunnis and Shias – they hate each other with same zeal and fervor.

Such radical indoctrinations are easy to come if the first step is already accomplished. What is there to stop you from committing a heinous crime if the God has already mandated it? While most rational people tend to bring in personal morality to question the motives of the interpreters (who ask them to become suicide bombers), some of the believers who truly and really believe in the stories as interpreted to them, would go ahead and commit crimes believing that they are doing it in the name of this invisible but revenge-seeking God.

Note

Indian Muslim parents need to know and understand what version of Islam their kids are being taught. Not giving enough attention can sometimes lead to seeing your son in an international event in a less desirable way!

[To be continued...]