We call them barbarians and ourselves civilized. But they know what we will never acknowledge openly and honestly: that barbarism is alive and well in each of us – ready to rise at the first sign of danger to our shores.
Already in Canada there are attacks on Muslims and cries to ban the refugees. Compassion and love are sacrificed to hate and mistrust. It’s racism in France on wings to the rest of the world; horror extended beyond their borders to innocents in every country and every camp.
Do you think it coincidence that a passport linking a suicide bomber to the Syrian refugees was left at the scene? Like the guy just forgot to blow it up along with all his other body parts?
Terrorism is not bullets and bombs. It is the ruthless and systematic injuring of a society by igniting the darkness already in us, and by setting one citizen against another in the hope that we will destroy ourselves and leave the field open. Or at least be too busy to notice the machine guns tiptoeing in.
I’ve heard it said that fear and guilt are the only enemies of humankind. It is not ISIS that needs to be annihilated, but the weakness in our own hearts – our judgments, our prejudices, our persecuted people.
Squashing Al Qaeda merely ushered forth a bigger evil in ISIS. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you and there will be no breeding ground in Canada for radical extremists, Muslim or otherwise.
Maureen Kerr, Surrey