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Before delving into the subject matter I intend to explore, let me take a moment and acknowledge the victims and families of those who died or were injured as a result of the Las Vegas terrorist attack on the 1st of October 2017, and the latest terrorist attack in Mogadishu on the 14th of October.
In the face of such barbarity, one must pause and think what these two events can teach us about “terrorism” as we have come to know it. I forcefully call both “terrorism” regardless of the narrative that the biased liberal media would say about the events in Las Vegas on the 1st of October 2017. If anything, the contestation of the definition of what happened in Vegas is a good starting point in drawing lessons from these two tragic events.
To help us consider the Las Vegas terrorist attack, let us go back in time to an attack that happened in London on the 15th of September 2017. In response to an incident where no one died, and about thirty people were injured, Donald Trump quickly resorted to the use of the word terrorist, stating that they “must be dealt with,” and that “The travel ban into the United States should be larger, tougher, and more specific.” This was Trump seizing upon this incident to further support his narrative of overt border discrimination policy in the United States against targeted Muslim states.
Rewind back further in time to 3 June 2017 when terrorists drove into people in London Bridge. At 1217 am on June the 4th, Donald Trump tweeted that “We need the travel ban as an extra level of safety.” At least 8 people were killed in the incident and about 48 more injured.
On the 1st of October 2017, a white man called Stephen Paddock killed a minimum of 59 people, and injured over half a thousand, and yet the worst Donald Trump could say about this barbaric act was that it was “an act of pure evil.”
Pure evil it was indeed. Yet this is strikingly out of character for a man who normally runs ahead of officials in the attacked country to create his own narrative of “terrorism.” Trump did not for once call the Vegas attack a “terrorist attack.” This is very important in understanding international terrorism.
Could it be that Donald Trump could not muster the courage to call someone who looks much like him a terrorist? Was it so hard to call a white man a “terrorist”? What role if any does the race of a perpetrator play in definitions of terror?
Intellectually open people know that terror has no race. Yet terrorism has been used to demonise and “other” Muslims and people of a particular look. Today Muslims all over the world carry the stigma of terrorism. Yet white people have committed crimes which for all intents and purposes are terrorist attacks, and the world has referred to these as “mass shootings” or acts motivated by mental illness.
This must stop.
It is up to us to critically think about the information we are fed about global events, particularly terrorism. The current narrative is flawed and perpetuates terrorism by actively reinforcing stereotypes, and pushing global citizens into a standoff against each other.
We must reject and challenge this.
The events in Mogadishu challenge another lie that has long been peddled in western liberal media and thought. There is a prevalent narrative that terrorist attacks are an “attack on our way of life.” In this narrative, “our way of life” refers to western secular culture. What this narrative misses is that people in Muslim countries suffer more terrorist attacks. What “western way of life” were these terrorists attacking in Mogadishu? Not to say that there is no secularism in Mogadishu; I have never been there. Even if there was, the vast majority of the dead are Muslims.
Terror knows no religious affiliation. Neither does it discriminate by “way of life.”
Ask Muslims in Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Somalia and in many other Muslim countries were terrorism continues to rip families apart.
The global politicisation of terror is flawed. It is a dangerous information propaganda that will one day manifest itself in something quite sinister. We, the masses, have surrendered so many liberties in the name of security. Terror has been the pretext by which many of these liberties have been resigned.
Terrorism is now a commodity, much like bread and butter on store shelves. It is a global brand, arguably the biggest as it’s selling point is death- people’s worst fear. In the face of terror, we have lost all common sense. Much can be learnt from these two tragic events. Take a moment, pause and think. Rationality applied, you will come to see that terrorism has no face. It has no religion. The one constant to it is that it is the barbaric ending of innocent human lives, and the maiming of many more.
That in totality is terrorism.
