Over the past few days, the name Faisal Shahzad has been showing up in headlines across the globe. There are reports detailing everything about Faisal Shahzad – his itineraries for past years, his interests, his wife’s interests, his work life and many other details depicting the alleged family-man gone terrorist.

In addition to the aforementioned points of interest, the topic of Islam and Terrorism is also brought back into the limelight. Was the motivation for this attack seeded in the religion of Islam? What does Islam teach about extremism and violence? The following video provides an excellent explanation:

In political circles and otherwise, there is now dialog about what the appropriate next step is in fighting terrorism and what actions the US can take to ensure something like this does not happen again. With respect to the dialog, I beseech the moderates on all sides to not take extremist stances and to not use this event to justify injustices. As conflicts in the past have illustrated and as conflicts today continue to teach us – extremism only breads extremism.

I would like to call attention to an especially telling tidbit of information that may have been missed. Here is a report of the motive behind the attempt to terrorize the United States.

“[Faisal Shahzad] has told authorities he was upset over U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan, especially a drone attack while he was in the country” [Source]

Instead of more attacks and greater involvement in Pakistan as some politicians would champion – this incident and past incidents suggest to us that fighting terrorism with terrorism will more likely than not bread even more terrorism. For those who doubt this, I leave you with the following content to reflect on:

Imran Khan explains the “War of Terror” and “Pakistani Taliban”

Historical Involvement of the US in Pakistan

Advertisement