Virus and scourge

Friday 29th January, 2021

The elusive virus the world is busy fighting, with might and main, albeit without much success, seems to have eclipsed another danger to humankind—the radicalisation of the youth. This phenomenon usually plagues trouble-torn societies in the developing world full of inequalities and racial and religious tensions that fuel armed conflicts. But other nations are also not safe as evident from the massacres in Christchurch, New Zealand (2019) and in Utoya, Norway (2012) and stabbing attacks in the UK, France, etc.

Shocking news has come from Singapore, which would have faced something extremely tragic but for the vigilance of its law enforcement authorities. The Singapore police have succeeded in preventing a massacre by arresting a 16-year-old boy. Acting on a tip-off, they found that the teenager was plotting to kill Muslims in two mosques on the anniversary of the Christchurch attacks, according to a BBC report. Whoever would have thought such a thing would ever happen in a country like Singapore, which prides itself on its egalitarianism?

Inspired by Christchurch mass murderer, Brenton Tarrant, who shot 51 Muslims dead and injured 41 others, the Singaporean boy had planned to knife the Muslim devotees and livestream the massacre. What is perhaps more shocking is that the 16-year-old was prepared to die, at the hands of the police, in the act of unleashing terror. He has told his interrogators that he foresaw only two outcomes—either being arrested before the attack or being killed by the police in the act of knifing his victims!

Singapore is widely considered a role model where legal mechanisms in place to ensure religious and racial harmony are concerned. But a boy there has got so radicalised as to plot to stab or chop a group of people to death, one by one. Perhaps, he may not be the only person who has been inspired by foreign terrorists or other such homicidal maniacs and psychologically conditioned to shed blood for macabre causes.

One of the factors that facilitate the radicalisation of youths and teenagers across the globe is the romanticisation or glorification or idealisation of terrorism. Some countries also make the mistake of harbouring terrorist outfits while claiming to promote human rights, and, in the process, expose themselves to the danger of some of their citizens being inspired by those violent elements flaunting various causes to justify their mindless terror. Norway is a case in point.

Anders Breivik, a neo-Nazi, who killed nearly 80 people, mostly youths, in two separate attacks, which shocked the world, in 2011, said in his ‘manifesto’ released via the Internet, that he had been inspired by the LTTE. He urged Europe to follow the LTTE, which rid the Northern parts of Sri Lanka of Muslims in 1990 and carried out massacres inside mosques. He said his massacre was aimed at drawing international attention to his ‘manifesto’.

It was claimed after the Easter Sunday attacks here, in April 2019, that the National Thowheed Jamaath (NTJ) had carried out the suicide bombings in retaliation for the massacre of Muslims in Christchurch. The NTJ drew inspiration from the ISIS, which beheads those who do not believe in its brand of Islam.

What the arrest of the Singaporean teenager for conspiring to carry out a massacre signifies is that the world will become a far more dangerous place to live in if the practice of allowing teenagers and youths to be exposed to radicalisation and/or bringing up children on a diet of extremism is allowed to continue. If children in a country like Singapore fall prey to extremism, how vulnerable those in other countries are is not difficult to imagine.