No time for complacency

I do not know much about any religion let alone Islam. But after what happened on December 16, at the Pakistani school, I am wondering which Islamic holy book or law legalised the killing of 'enemy's children,' unarmed and unprepared, in retaliation for the torture carried out by the 'enemy.' The question arose in my mind while reading Tehrik-e-Taliban spokesperson's remark that they targeted the school to make the Pakistani government feel their pain of losing their loved ones in military attacks.

The 132 children murdered in cold blood were not part of a war 'casualty.' Like Israel, which bombed Palestinian schools and hospitals this year in suspicion of terrorists hiding in them, Tehrik-e-Taliban did not go inside the Peshawar school in search of their enemy, the Pakistani army. It was a normal school, where children aged 5 to 17 studied. It was not an army training academy! Tehrik-e-Taliban sent their squad to that school with the specific objective of killing the children.

Unlike the Nigerian terrorist group Boko Haram, they did not take any student hostages, so that they could get into some kind of negotiation with the Pakistani government later. Had they taken the students hostage, the parents of the 132 children could have held on to some kind of hope about their offspring being alive, just as the parents of the 300 Nigerian girls continue to hope for their return.

They killed the children! They killed them right in front of the eyes of their class mates, other children of the schools, who would have to carry this traumatic memory all through their lives and live in fear and perhaps hatred, hopefully not against the religion Tehrik-e-Taliban claim to follow, but against the terrorist group's crooked ideology.

Coincidently, we in Bangladesh were celebrating our 44th Victory Day on the same day when the school massacre took place more than 2,000 kilometres away. We were celebrating our freedom from that very land. When I saw the news on television, a strange sense of relief and gratitude passed over me. I thanked the Almighty for my birth in an independent, sovereign nation which is not part of Pakistan, a terrorist's haven.

But the feeling did not last long. An anxiety crippled my mind, when I remembered that there are people in my country who support and follow the sick and perverted ideologies of Tehrik-e-Pakistan. What if they feel encouraged by these heinous acts and follow the footsteps of the Taliban? Another chilling truth is many of them run religion-based education institutions such as the Qawmi Madrasas, with no state monitoring. How do I know that these people are not injecting the poison of hatred into the minds of young children studying in those institutions?

Once in a while, when bomb blasts take place in one of these institutions or bomb making materials are found in possession of madrasa students, we become concerned as to what purpose those deadly objects serve in 'educational' institutes. Can bomb making be part of a religious curriculum? Learning such craft may perhaps be justified if the learner has the mental capacity to understand the dangers such knowledge possesses and can make correct judgements about where, when and against whom such deadly objects can be used. Equipping one with such knowledge may not be harmful, when the person understands and appreciates the value of a diverse and inclusive society, where every human being irrespective of their race, colour, religion, ethnicity, gender, can live their lives the way they want, without harming others.

In fact, I fail to understand how fundamentalists preach or teach their students the need to make everyone follow a certain religion, a certain way of life, when the Creator they pray to did everything possible to make the world as colourful, as diverse as varied as possible. And the Creator made human beings, the creation with intellectual ability that  can add more new objects to this world, not destroy and reduce variety (though this is what we have been doing all the time)! If one appreciates the Creator's work, how can they expect human beings not to be different, not to have different views, different ways of life, language and culture? How can gangs like Tehrik-e-Taliban and others who follow and support them kill the very creation of the Almighty, hoping to establish the Almighty's rule, which in actuality celebrates diversity.

I wonder which religious faith encourages such practice. However, if this is what's being taught in the madrasas of my country, then we should do something about it immediately. I have no objection to madrasas if they produce pupils like Kazi Nazrul Islam, our national poet, a man of creation whose first education was obtained from a village moktob, but if it produces men like Hayatullah, Tehrik-e-Taliban chief, then there is no reason for us to feel complacent about not being a part of Pakistan. It is time we try and save our children from the polluted air of terrorism in the name of Islam as well as militarism and autocracy which fan such perverted ideologies.

The writer is a reporter, The Daily Star.