This word has been in the dictionary all the while but recently has been given a new meaning, a new emphasis to denote something nearly as dangerous as the bomb! But the atomic bomb was used only once by the Americans on Hiroshima and killed about 140,000 people. Can you imagine how many people are likely in the end to be killed by the characters going to the Middle East to be radicalised or even staying at home to be radicalised by propaganda and hate messages on the internet.
The dictionary tells us that to be radical is to be severe, to be extreme. In other words a radical is one who holds an extreme view different from the average person. But to be radicalised, something or a happening or some people can push or cajole one to hold extreme views.
These days you hear it on CNN that this or that person has gone to the Middle East, to Iraq, to Syria and returned to Europe or America radicalised and has subsequently butchered fellow human beings. Umar Abdulmutallab, a Nigerian, was said to have been radicalised in Lome, London and Yemen and was instructed by Al-Qaeda to blow up a plane in the United States. He was caught in the nick of time and is in prison.
Why do people go to be radicalised? To put it bluntly, why do people go to be taught how to kill fellow human beings? In my view, the Middle East is a danger to the whole human race. Wars have been fought there dating back to the time God was said to have bequeathed a large swathe of previously occupied territory to the Israelites as their promised land after He had rescued them from captivity in Egypt. From that time it has been a war of attrition between the Arabs and the Jews! But the Arabs, having failed to annihilate the Jews, have turned the war into an all-comers war. Arabs are Muslims. But the Muslim religion is fractured. There are many sects. Each sect does not believe that the other has a right to exist. It is kill or be killed. The Sunni, the majority, would like to wipe out the Shiites, the next in population. See what Saudi Arabia is doing to the Houthis in Yemen. The Houthis are Shiites. They must be wiped out especially as they are allied to Iran, the headquarters of the Shiites. If you deviate from the Sunni way of worshipping Allah, you are better off dead. So they are wiping out Shiites, Alawites, and Christians in particular must be removed from the face of the earth. Previously a large part of the Middle East was Christian. But the Moslems have killed them, forcefully converted them, or forced them to flee.
Some Sunnis seized a portion of the Middle East and call themselves ISIS, the pure religion. Any human who is not ISIS must convert or die. And they are spreading their gospel all over the world. It is to ISIS that young Americans and Europeans go be radicalised, to be taught how to kill other human beings without remorse, to be taught extreme hatred. The man who has just butchered more than fifty Americans in Orlando, Florida, pledged allegiance to ISIS before he was killed by the police.
These young people going to ISIS do not surprise me too much. These European societies and Americans are so advanced that everything is done for the youth. They are so pampered that they hardly have to struggle for much. Virtually from birth everything is laid out, made easy, for them. Dare you, as a driver, obstruct a school bus in the United States of America and you would be really brutalised by law enforcement for endangering the lives of the future generation.
From childhood these children are exposed to all sorts of violent movies and computer games including Nintendo and the like. There is a set being currently advertised on CNN in which the voice of the action hero, Arnold Schwarzenegger, is urging all and sundry to go to the App store and purchase their own. Children learn to kill or be killed on television and computer games. It does not surprise me that some will get so bored and be brainwashed by ISIS propaganda and find their way to the Middle East to turn fantasy into realism. So there they see in real life people shouting `Allahu akbar’ and cutting the throats of other human beings. No doubt some will be shocked by it but find they are already in and cannot get out. Some will like it and eagerly partake having liked the smell, or even the taste of blood. And it this group that will believe that if they kill a Christian or another human being their place in heaven is assured. It is this group that go back to America, and Belgium, and France and bomb their fellow human beings.