The Roads to Peace
The roads to
peace are paths of war,
The gentle dove will leave her scar.
The moral men
to say the least,
Will kill us all to get
their peace.
The roads that
lead to victories gained,
Are filled with people
full of pain.
Only our
Creator knew,
We’d kill so many to save so few.
The recent terrorist tragedy in London is
disheartening. Once again some nefarious force has seen fit to totally
disregard innocent human life in pursuit of a vile agenda that few of us know
and even fewer could understand. The response of the world leaders assembled in Edinburgh
for the G-8 Summit is perhaps more disheartening, as it promises more of the
misguided policies that have proven so ineffective in prosecuting the war on
terror. The leaders of the Western powers continue to imply that they will
fight violence with more violence of their own. If current events are any
indicator of future developments, such a policy will only serve to beget yet
more terrorism.
This is a war being guided on
both sides by self-righteous murderers whose motives and proclamations mirror
each other. Each side sees God as being exclusively with them. That being the
case, the restraint and judiciousness urged by Christian and Islamic theology
to guide the execution of war is cast aside with wanton impunity. Each side
manipulates a vulnerable public to create a climate that allows for the
perpetuation and the inevitable escalation of the ongoing slaughter. Each side
reserves the right to use the spectacle of indiscriminate violence to “Shock
and Awe” the opposition, yet will deny that its tactics can be described as
terrorism. Each side sees their civilian population as hapless, innocent
victims, while the suffering innocent civilians on the other side are
acceptable collateral damage.
There will never be any real progress in ending this terror war, until we realize that we have all become collateral damage, unacceptable collateral damage. That being the case, there is no they or we in this affair. We are they and they are we. When a child in New York never sees his mother again because she was crushed in a collapsed tower at the World Trade Center, we all have suffered an irreplaceable loss. When an impoverished family in Afghanistan is bombed from the face of the Earth by a misguided missile, something of our collective humanity is destroyed by the blast. When a child in Iraq is born with gross birth defects due to his mother’s exposure to depleted uranium, we have all been deformed. When London commuters fear ever again entering the underground, because of the ill-advised actions of a handful of desperate fanatics, their insecurity touches us all.
We, the collaterally damaged,
will continue to exist in a state of dehumanizing loss, deformity, and
insecurity until we rise up, unite, and refuse to support at any level the
policies of leaders who continually fail to heed one of the surest of all
political lessons: killing innocent civilians will never lead to a positive
outcome for the transgressing party. This realization is the first meaningful
salvo anyone could fire in a real war on terror. However, as long as we are not
as moved by the suffering of innocent civilians anywhere as we are by the
suffering of those close to us, it will be a salvo that remains unfired.
Imam Zaid Shakir
7/7/05
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