FLIRTing with the Crowds

From last days’ big news, This is striking me pretty close to heart. We (me and three friends) were traveling in India in October when Benazir Bhutto finally returned home from her self-imposed exile to run at the election next year. Her company got attacked by jihadist terrorists right after her return to the country and it was of course all over the news in India as well. That time she was saved but neither me nor any of my companions had any doubts that it wouldn’t be long until there would be another attempt at her life. A strong opponent of radical islam and acts of terror in her country it was no big surprise what happened on 27th December, when there was a shooting and consequent suicide bombing that evidently led to her death (from shrapnel, not from a gunshot wound as was originally thought).

What drives masses of seemingly ordinary people into sacrificing themselves to end the lives of people advocating modernity, democracy and peace is something I as a westerner and especially as a Scandinavian find extremely hard to understand. The social objects and incentives the leaders of these people use to engage their followers are extremely powerful, and furthermore, they are said by the right (or actually, wrong) people. For example Mohammed Ijaz ul-Haq, religious affairs minister of Pakistan, has made public statements in favor of martyrdom operations and supports the view that they are “the greatest of all sorts of Jihad in the Cause of Allah”. To hear these words coming from an educated statesman for what is now one of the most unstable countries in the world - a country in posession of nuclear weapons - makes me angry. Where the heck is the responsibility of these people?