The quickest route, the shortcut if you like, is to die fighting for your righteously divine cause, preferably taking as many enemy lives with you as you go. In simple terms, it means sacrifice for the greater cause. That’s all fine and well, until you realize that “sacrifice” according to them, extends beyond the fighters themselves and includes anyone unfortunate enough to be caught in the middle of their struggle.
When asked about the indiscriminate innocent victims of their suicide bombings or shelling, your typical Islamist will generally shrug and say, “If they were true Muslims, they are now in heaven,” as if they’re performing an actual favor for the victims. They should be thankful, I suppose. So what happens if the victims aren’t “true” Muslims, or members of another religion, i.e., “infidels” in jihadi-speak, a description which in most cases means “anyone who is not one of us”? Well, “Then they go to hell” is the macabre, simple answer you’ll likely get.
via Al-Qaeda’s Syrian Recruits: The Case of ‘Abu Majed’
Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East.
I guess this is what terrorizes and fascinates westerns as me. Not on the way of admiring these guys, but on the way of feeling shocked to notice that educated people can fall in such a blind will to use violence compulsing others to follow some theoretical-political-religious… guidelines.
Equally surprising, I think, as happened in WWII, when most SS officers were chosen among the mass, under the Nazi social experiment, not only by their phisycal conditions but also by their academic CV.
Chosen among the best… to lead the most regressive and destructive policies. Chosen among the best educated to supress their knowledge and replace it for blind obedience.
I am catholic. Not the practicant kind of,… but one with a firm religious feeling. It’s my own confidence in my belief what makes me openminded and respectful for what others belief. It’s their business and their choice and their path. And whatever happens to them and their souls is something between God and them. I have no word to say in it.
How weak is Abu Majed’s fanatical belief, to my eyes.
How weak it is, that married couples holding hands on street, or people kissing, or women going to school, or simply basic education, or people following other belief, or no belief at all , or different traditions, different food, different clothes, different habits… makes them feel so scared as to kill for it. How terrified must be that angry man.
Because Abu Majed….. (Amer Ghajar, as it was his true name) … was not fighting for Syria. Not for Rebellion. Not even against Assad. He was fighting against Alawis, against Shiah, against secularists, maybe against Christians and evenually against pro-democratic rebels. He was fighting against all those who are located out of his religious paranoic umbrella.
Against all the different ones. He, who was so different, was scared of them as to kill because of it.
Amer Ghajar’s main job was to push AGAINST. Not to push FOR. And that is usually a sterile fight. And never an advance.
All you do when you fight AGAINST WHATEVER is to pull back, to look to the past situation or position that will never come back.
To resist standing and going nowhere, in the best of cases, when you just defend yourself… but going literally nowhere when it’s you who attack.
Amer Ghajar decided to let his individualism aside and became part of a scared killing mass. Like others, he decided to blind his eyes, shut his ears and disconnect his brains to find the courage needed to achieve a regression.
A regression promoted by many cowards who are afraid of living their faith discretely and respectfully in the middle of a world in constant change, which represents a threat to their 10 year-old styled mental schemes.
I am a Christian, a Roman Catholic (and quite a criticist one, although Francis I is a blow of fresh air, thanks Good Lord!) And I am not afraid of saying it.
Mostly because what I am and what I choose to believe in is my own business, and no one else’s. It’ not a matter for discussion with anyone else and that’s why I am not afraid of saying.
Same as I am not afraid of what others belief, or not. I can be critical (and Lord knows I am!) and I like discuss and debate. Not for the aim of winning,but for the aim of learning.
But then whatever others believe is part of that freedom that I believe God gave to us. Their business.
My belief is my sole responsibility and freedom my strength.
It comes from inside me. As everyone else’s. And there is where I apply my judgement on these matters. It’s my soul what must worry me, and not other’s.
It’s simply not my job, but that of the Creator I believe in.
And I won’t dare to take his place and be a judge of souls to decide who is saved and who is lost!!.
Why is it so hard to understand to this once upon a time intelligent people who prefer to waste their energy…. going literally nowhere?
And once we reach this point. Why no one explains to these clever guys that martyrdom requires to be killed by someone because of your faith…. and not to kill someone because of theirs?.
To use that word (applied to everyone killed because of your actions except the targets, as everyone dead out of “the enemy” becomes atomatically one of their casualties and engrosses the lists of “martyrs”) is simply to prostitute a concept that has some load of respect.
But well… once they have prostituted the whole concept of God, …. what can you expect.
Ma’a Salama!
Al-Must'arib (the vocational Mossarab) 