See No Evil

Main kiske haath par apna lahoo talash karoon
Tamam sheher ne pehne hue hain dastane. Mustafa Zaidi

[how to find/your bloody hands/all here/are wearing gloves]

Of all the gruesome images of 7/7, the one that really rankles is that of the sober-sounding uncle of one of the terrorists telling newspeople that his family is shattered by the revelations.

The community where these killers emerged from, thus, had seemingly no idea what was brewing in the evil minds of people they describe variously as proud, British, kind, calm, nice, respectful etc.

How is this even possible? How can a community & family not know the radical tendencies of their children? Either this implies gross negligence or willful blindness on their part. For those searching for the root causes of terrorism, this is the social failure they need to examine.

This see no evil attitude of the terrorists' families is also the perfect metaphor for the segments of Muslim societies where such killers come from. Here, killing of innocents in places like Israel and Kashmir are considered freedom fights and the imagined perfidy of Hindus, Jews, Christians, and other so-called infidels is outrageously considered settled fact by most. Here one national hero peddles nuclear nightmares and another considers it normal for his child to court that of a known terrorist. How, then, does one tell what's right and wrong in this surreal world? Consequently, over time, the entire community becomes blind to real differences between law-abiding citizens and law-breaking terrorists.

The only way to get past this darkness is for the law-abiding to re-examine their largely bogus complaints against non-Muslims. Absent this, terrorists will always be able to hide in plain sight behind the cover of rhetoric that everyone else in their community uses.

Let's also not accept lame and inadequate suggestions by terrorists' families that they are shattered. Shattered, sir, is it? It is the families of those killed by your wards who are shattered. They brought up their kids to be law-abiding and productive members of society who don't hold grudges on issues in far-away lands that really don't concern them. It is your kids who you failed to bring up well, who you failed to dissuade from getting aggravated about non-issues in distant lands, who you failed to teach respect for fellow humans, that have shattered other people's lives. Please don't seek our sympathy for your own personal failures.