The Manchester attack contains several meanings that mark - once again - the difference between Islamism and Islam . As several newspapers have mentioned, the explosion at the Ariana Grande concert is the most serious episode of terrorism to have affected Britain since July 2005, with an echo of indignation if possible even greater. Public opinion was in fact shocked by the cold and cruel choice of target by the terrorists, who, far from being mad fanatics without control, decided to hurt Great Britain by hitting the younger population. Once again the Islamic State has revealed itself in all its ruthlessness and aridity; men without honor, capable of disavowing their own creed since in the Koran the life of children is sacred from the day of their conception.
On the other hand, what has happened should not be too surprising: if we think about the daily life of a child in the territories dominated by al-Baghdadi, we immediately realize how inhumanity, violence and coercion are on the agenda. The video images of the kids trained to find the prisoner and then slaughter him as in a macabre game they are in everyone's memory, as are the schools of indoctrination Sharia who advocate hatred and violence against the West.
Terrorism in general is a constant denial of the values of life: what does it matter if they are to die creatures moreover born of "infidels"? The statements of Abu Muqatil that invite every Muslim to rage on the crusaders anywhere in the world and under any circumstances, have had a devastating effect, distorting, in fact, the very definition of "Lone Wolf". No action is casual and every expression of violence always has a clear paternity.
The killing of child-raising children at a teenager's concert has a twofold purpose: the first is to insinuate, even among the very young, the feeling of insecurity and dismay that has long harbored in the minds of the most adults; secondly, the terrorists hope to arouse hatred towards the good part of their coreligionists, thus riding the wave of populism that is enveloping most of Europe.
Anti-Islamic demonstrations, hatred and discrimination are two basic ingredients to lead to a rapid radicalization and therefore to new potential volunteers of terror. An attempt on the life of a teenager in the act of having fun also serves to admonish the same young Muslims to whom the same right is denied with brutal cruelty. It will really irritate them Jihadists knowing that Western teenagers, apparently slaves to mobile phones, social networks and video games, hide, in their lightness, the courage not to be afraid and not to be afraid in the future. It is precisely in this that the Islamists will fail, since young people of a certain age live surrounded by an aura of courageous recklessness that overcomes fears of falling victim to an attack at a pop concert. The suspension of the scheduled musical performances was a right and necessary choice, especially to avoid further attacks, but it is essential to return to normal as soon as possible. The gesture of Queen Elizabeth II, careful in respecting her schedule of appointments, has been criticized, however it has a fund of coherence with respect to what must be done against the strategy of terror: do not give up on living.
Tireless terrorism
Children are victims twice: both when they perish in an attack, and when they themselves become an unconscious instrument of death. Recruiters from the Islamic State, but also from al-Qaeda and all Islamist organizations, have always invested heavily in the indoctrination of adolescents: the youngest are easily manipulated and their sacrifice attracts the morbid attention of the international media. The use of minors for the sinister achievement of their ends is, therefore, a consolidated practice in the sphere of Islamic extremism and has lasted for several years.
Assaf Moghadam, in his The Globalization of Martyrdom, tells how during the Iran-Iraq war the Iranian regime enlisted children to swell the ranks of the so-called "suicidal waves": "20.000 children with twelve months of age and thirteen who were sent into the line of fire and with minefields, with no backup. These children were used to clear the way for the soldier who followed them ". The call to arms of the ayatollah - whose slogan read "Offer one of your children to the Imam" - got horribly positive results, with the mass arrival of young creatures ready to do anything to please the representative of Allah. Moghadam cites the Iranian case not so much because of its connection to terrorism - it was, in fact, a war fought between two sovereign states - just to point out the persuasive effectiveness used by the radical religious. The same washing of the brain was suffered by the small Iraqis enlisted in the Ashbal Saddam (Saddam's lions) trained to face allies after the first Gulf War. Several testimonies of marines who fought in Mosul reported numerous attacks carried out by boys not even adults who took up the rifle or hid explosives. The macabre primacy in the field of child suicide bombers belongs to Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Peter W. Singer, author of the essay The New Children of Terror, reports how: "Palestine conflict sparkedup again in 2000 ". At least thirty suicide bombing attacks. Lately the most striking episodes about children used as human bombs are Boko Haram, a worthy ISIS partner in Nigeria; in a report drawn up by UNICEF in the 2016, over 17 children under the age of eighteen were exploited as fighters and potential martyrs.
Rules of engagement: seniors, women and children
In the ninth edition of the ISIS propaganda newspaper Rumiyah, an article entitled The Ruling on the Belligerent Christians circumscribes, to the vaguest extent, what are the legitimate or illegitimate objectives among Christians. According to the ranting vision of ISIS, the Jihad considers the killing of anyone who threatens or wields a weapon against Muslims an indispensable duty; at the same time, all those who materially and ideally support those who fight against Islam must be eliminated without distinction. The circle of the excluded by the al-Baghdadi avenging blade therefore shrinks dramatically. As for the weakest, the opinion is that the spilled blood of women, old people and children is useless: "As for those who do not normally carry weapons, such as women, children, the elderly, and the infirm, the default with them being that they are to be taken as slaves. The rules of engagement also emphasize that unarmed subjects can be killed unintentionally when they are close to strategic objectives: "Therefore, the killing of their women and children is being done in a raid by the mujahidin where it is difficult to distinguish between the fighters and the non-fighters, or when they are killed by a weapon that has a wide range of damage, or in the case when conducting artillery bombardment, or detonating explosive, or in which the fighters are presented.
Even though the Manchester arena was chosen wisely, the community jihadi justifies the death of innocents with the same formula adopted by Western armies, classifying them as "collateral damage". The equation of terms is pure madness: the very definition of terrorism implies that to die are mostly unarmed victims without any military significance. In addition there is a clear inconsistency when it comes to accidental deaths caused by "explosive belts or car bombs ": just one shahid has, in fact, the possibility of choosing how, when and where to trigger its load of death. When he kills women and children he always does it consciously.
Whenever an organization jihadi prepares to hit, he does it by planning different and unusual schemes, adapting his own modus operandi to countermeasures taken by Western governments. A constant, however, emerges after every attack: the police and intelligence knew the bomber. So it is precisely on this point that counter-terrorism must work, focusing on the temporal space that separates the criminal from his goal. An accurate collection of information and the subsequent sharing of results could effectively block suspects even before arming. European governments, however, still have some hesitation in using with ease what are called "high police measures", often judged as an undue intrusion into everyday life. The worst evil is the Western propensity to face these tragic events as a thing in itself, separated from everyday life. The dynamics of the recent attacks demonstrate the inability to learn from our mistakes, leaving the terrorists free to act in the same way.
(photo: web)
