How to tame terrorism.

Secular education is the only permanent solution to the terrorist threat.
We cannot kill terrorism, we can only tame it; the sooner we realize this the better our chances for success. When it comes to Islamic terrorists all we think about is that Islamic fanaticism is the reason why we have Islamic terrorists. This is only partly true because the reason for terrorism has very much to do with human nature as with fanatic beliefs. We can keep winning the battles but the war will go on as the supply of terrorists will continue unless we change our approach from war to education. Only by eliminating the brain washing of the poor children's minds can we put a stop to the creation of terrorists.

When it comes to Islamic terrorists all we think about is that Islamic fanaticism is the reason why we have Islamic terrorists. This is only partly true because the reason for terrorism has very much to do with human nature as with fanatic beliefs.

To have a sane human nature one has to have a very strong sense of human dignity. And for human dignity to be positive one has to have economic dignity because human dignity is unstable and incomplete without economic dignity. In Pakistan and Afghanistan all those who can afford regular education are sent to regular schools. Those parents who cannot afford to send their children to regular schools and in fact cannot even feed their kids send them to where ever they can and most often the only free schools available are religious schools and quite often only extremist religious schools. These schools provide the children with their own version of economic dignity. As a result the children grow up feeling their human dignity powered by a twisted economic dignity that is provided by their religious beliefs. Thus their own dignity is not their own self worth it is their religion's omnipotent image. Their own life becomes secondary to the glory of their faith.

It is well known that non fanatic regular soldiers, even very secular soldiers fight less for their own dignity and more for their own group's dignity. In India they have 'Rajhasthan Rifles', 'Punjab Rifles' etc because soldiers fight harder for the glory of their own kind. Just like Russians during second world war trying to prove they are better than the Americans by taking Berlin first even though they knew it was going to cause tens of thousands of causalities. Imagine people fighting for their own dignity where it is not their own dignity but their dignity is powered by their faith. This is why any perceived insult to their religious icons is a very personal insult because it is insulting the personal dignity of the person which is his dignity that comes from his religion's dignity. Thus a person whose dignity flows from his religion puts his own life below the glory of his religion. And the fanatics exploit these poor souls by later exploiting the very group dignity that they themselves help to create.

The way our Govt. is fighting terrorism is like a polluted river is running into the ocean. We taking the polluted water a bucket at a time and remove the polluted water. This could go on for ever. It will drain our resources. No wonder our Govt. says that this fight is going to go on for a long time. With our current approach it will go on for a very long time.

How about finding the source from where the pollution is coming into the river? How about providing normal economic dignity to these poor kids? It will not only cost pennies on the dollar it will be far more effective.
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