jueves, 19 de mayo de 2016

A small, obvious truth about terrorism

It's one of those truths that, when I find them, I can't but think that I'm an idiot, that I should have realized sooner.

It took me to have an taste of terrorism myself to find it.

Around a couple hours ago I was waiting for the bus to come home. It was midnight but it was a busy area in central London. A guy approached me. The guy started to shout at me, asking me to empty my backpack. All I though I could say is that I was sorry, that I couldn't understand. But then he keeps insisting, shouting, and, as he looked quite violent, I tried to go to the tube station nearby looking for help. As I started yelling for help, the guy got even more violent and tried to kick me, hitting me in the back (and was lucky I was wearing my backpack). Then, as I mentioned I'd call the police, he started mocking my bad English (I give him a point here. It should be better after 5 years here) and suddenly he says the magic word: "Allah doesn't want you anymore. We speak English in this country".

So that was it. I was a "muslim" wearing a backpack.

The guy sees a "muslim" with a backpack and he thinks that the right thing to do is to terrorize him.

And I needed this obvious clue to realize the truth: the problem with extremists / terrorists / whateverphobics is not that they are extremists / terrorists / whateverphobics. The problem is they are insanely crazy. Someone who hates someone else because of their religion, race, sexual preference to the point of inflicting terror is not someone who hates muslim/black/gay people but it's otherwise a nice person.  They have a deep, gruesome problem, and they are unpredictable, and they are a living danger for everyone who steps in their way, no matter how sikh/hispanic/transgender they are. And when I say "inflict terror", it can be terror inflicted on those people, or on people that it's susceptible to be convinced that these hindi/asian/lesbian people are a threat.

And there's another obvious truth. It's not a coincidence that you see terror fought with terror. Terror is probably the first primal thing that occurs to someone scared.

Note 1: I'm not the first Italian to be "suspected" of being muslim/middle Eastern. There is this guy:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3578751/Italian-Ivy-League-economist-pulled-flight-seatmate-suspected-terrorist.html
who had his flight delayed and was questioned because he was so obviously middle-Eastern plus (yes, you seem to need a plus --in my case was the backpack-- as you can't probably put into trouble every single so-obviously-muslim you find. C'mon, you pick your battles...) he was scrabbling some suspicious things on paper (which happened to be math).

Note 2: the guy was arrested by the London police. I called 911 while he was still trying to kick me. I filed a police report and will follow the case.

Addendum: as I realized that it would take some time to get sleepy, I just went for a night stroll in the far less busy, far less central area of London where I live, when it was already past 2am. I didn't even carry my phone with me.