President of Patriots Forum, D.C. Nath was superannuated in January, 1995, as the Special Director, Intelligence Bureau, D.C. Nath (IPS-1960) was associated with the International Institute of Security and Safety Management (IISSM), headquartered in New Delhi, for over 14 years, first as the Executive President & CEO and then as the President & Director General, between February, 1997 and March, 2011. The author of a highly acclaimed book, Intelligence Imperatives for India, Mr. Nath earned high plaudits from all around for two of his very significant presentations on: “Revisiting the Future of India” (2005, London) and “Lessons from India for the War On Terrorism” (2007, USA). He is the only one in the field, combining the experiences of a police officer with specialization in intelligence and strategic analysis and an industrial security expert par excellence. More Bio on D. C. Nath…
OPINION>>>>
October 27, 2014
Dear Friends,
Subject: Why And How One Becomes A Jihadi?
Is there any straight answer to this all-important question? An interesting piece, “Don’t Blame My Brother For Becoming A Jihadi” in “The Guardian” by one Robb Leech, has attempted a reply. Let us read that first:
Quote (.)
My brother wanted to be a jihadi – and society is creating many more like him
Extremism of any kind is a symptom of an unhealthy society and, in order to eradicate it, we should look to treat its cause
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/22/brother-jihadi-terrorist-society-extremism
theguardian.com, Wednesday 22 October 2014 11.00 BST
As Isis continues to dominate our collective consciousness, most recently with the crucifixion of a 17-year-old boy, the government appears to be fumbling in the dark for new ways of stemming the blood from an old wound which refuses to heal; only they seem to be thinking about bigger plasters, which probably won’t do the trick. Meanwhile, somewhere in the UK, another jihadist is born.
I documented the birth of one particular jihadist in my BBC3 film My Brother the Islamist. The film charted my attempts to reconnect with Rich, who happened to be my stepbrother, to try to understand the new world he had become a part of. Ultimately the shared journey drew us closer together, but a year later he would be arrested for attempting to join the Taliban in Pakistan.
Only two weeks before he vanished from the streets of Ealing (I haven’t spoken to or seen him since he was taken into custody), we met for a coffee. We talked about our family, football, and albeit fleetingly, the future. I left the meeting with a smile on my face. Six months later he would plead guilty to terrorism charges, and I began making a second film, My Brother the Terrorist.
From the moment he converted, Rich was talking about fighting western oppression and dying a martyr. In a sense, the writing was on the wall. Violent jihad was something he and his “brothers” constantly talked about. When Rich pleaded guilty to preparing to commit acts of terror in 2012, he had been planning to travel to Afghanistan to cross the border and join the Pakistani Taliban.
But I never saw Rich as a terrorist, and didn’t see any of the people he surrounded himself with as terrorists either. What I saw were, and I hate to say it – vulnerable young men – with massive great chips on their shoulders. With their radical new status they felt empowered, superior and perhaps most annoyingly for me, righteous.
In a former life, the world they had been brought up in had wronged them. Perhaps they had family troubles, or maybe society shunned them, whatever it was, they resented it – they were lost, empty and had no stake in the western world. Becoming a radical Muslim reversed the polarity.
It’s a cliquey club from which everything beyond is viewed as imperfect at best, or evil at worst. And it’s the evils that these guys saturate their perceptions of the world with. Horrific, graphic and brutal images of the suffering, pain and death of Muslims at the hands of the west, played out alongside a powerful narrative of oppression and injustice – a narrative that is difficult to dismantle. The irony is that the very shock of seeing such graphic brutality, which plays such a key role in the radicalisation process, eventually becomes ordinary.
People like my stepbrother justify fighting violent jihad out of a sense of responsibility and powerlessness at the plight of fellow Muslims. Yes, fighting on a foreign battlefield and owning your own AK-47 is pretty exciting too (and let’s not forget that dying a martyr is like hitting the afterlife jackpot), but crucially their motivation isn’t to kill innocent people, or to do bad. They’re not thinking about blowing themselves up at a tube station, the story they’re telling themselves is, as confounding as it sounds – one of saving humanity.
The inherent problem in attempting to tackle radicalisation is that often it is too late. By the time its signs begin to show, the scene is already set. Extremism of any kind is a symptom of an unhealthy society and, like any illness, in order to eradicate it, we should look to treat its cause.
Unquote (.)
What appeals to us as most significant is:
People like my stepbrother justify fighting violent jihad out of a sense of responsibility and powerlessness at the plight of fellow Muslims. Yes, fighting on a foreign battlefield and owning your own AK-47 is pretty exciting too (and let’s not forget that dying a martyr is like hitting the afterlife jackpot), but crucially their motivation isn’t to kill innocent people, or to do bad. They’re not thinking about blowing themselves up at a tube station, the story they’re telling themselves is, as confounding as it sounds – one of saving humanity.
Even admitting this represents one aspect of the picture, the writer seems to have overlooked the fundamental question, being raised all over. It is not the people. It is the religion, that is, Islam. Experts today are not shy of saying that it is Islam, which is not a religion, that clearly compels its followers to take to ‘jihad’ as a sacred duty—a duty to convert all non-believers to the “true faith” by well-laid out guidelines in the Quran. Islam, in other words, they contend, is not a religion but a distinct political strategy to establish Umma (Islamic brotherhood) all over.
Unless, therefore, educated Muslims, intellectuals and religious scholars, aware of the identified pitfalls in their religion and seized with the urgent need of suitable reforms and not scared of facing fatwas in doing that, Muslims in large numbers will continue to be “misguided” in the way so well described in the report in “The Guardian” by Robb Leech.
This applies mutadis mutandis in Indian conditions also. The Muslims in India, as we shall see in another report soon, are not yet that much radicalised—may be due to the sobering influence of the Indian civilisational ethos to an extent. Current Indications are not however, healthy or hopeful. Time alone will tell.
Vandemataram,
Your sevak,
D.C. Nath
(Former Spl. Director, IB)
(President, Patriots’ Forum)
Source: Patriot Forum
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