Jannat…
When Jihadists train their recruits, the recruits don’t agree to it simply out of fear or for money or for the promise of heaven/jannat. They most often do it for a certain ‘ideology’ They get brainwashed over many months and are shown video footages of atrocities committed on their brethren. These naive minds are slowly poisoned enough to coax themselves to seek revenge.
‘Jihad’ literally translates to ‘revolution’. Your terrorism is their revolution. In their gullible minds, they are revolutionists seeking justice for their brethren who were wronged. When we then seek revenge in the name of justice, we do the same. We call it antiterrorism, but we bomb entire cities for it, including innocents. The basic emotion governing both of us is the same; a disdain for the opposite party and a yearning to seek revenge. If only, the method and its branding varies.
It is interesting to observe the psychology behind how this behavior takes root. Forget nations and extremists, note that individual who thoroughly hates you and you don’t even know why. The instances we term as ‘misunderstanding’, but you will also just as clearly see how easy it is to brainwash people, especially the ones who can’t think for themselves.
I still don’t know what goes on in the vile heads of people who pick on you. I don’t know how they are lead to convince themselves that they are right to dislike somebody for some random x y z reason that makes no sense. Every time this is hammered into their heads, the seed of jealousy and hatred is sown. It could be anything from you getting something they always wanted but never could get, or made to believe you are the reason for their shortcomings and plenty such.
This jealousy soon metamorphoses into hatred without even them realizing. Now they start acting in ways that re enforces that feeling. They don’t realize when they are transforming from hatred to plain cruelty or criminality. They then also justify the cruelty with “I think she/he deserves it”, or cook up reasons to suit their narrative, anything that doesn’t cause a cognitive dissonance in them.
Trust me, if you sit them down and ask ‘Why?’, you will in all likelihood not get a good enough reason. It will in all probability not be something you did, rather something they thought you did. Assuming stuff to justify ones actions makes people feel good about themselves. It is said, our brain doesn’t like incomplete stories. We hence fill it with tales and details about events or people that we concoct out of thin air so that when the story feels complete, our minds feel more at ease. That doesn’t mean the stories are true.
After a point, they are so deluded with hatred that they only recognize the feeling not the reason behind it. For them the lines between delusion and reality have blurred. If anything they are on some failing mission to please their fragile ego and their very shaky ideology. They have managed to shift the blame on someone innocent where no crime was committed because that person seems like the easy target. They are basically akin to that college bully who will pick on someone puny for no other reason but to feel good about themselves.
They have gone from being naive and brainwashed to a thorough criminal. And you know what is the saddest part? They don’t even know when all of that happened. It was so masterfully done and so effortlessly executed by their puppeteer, that when it comes to judgement day, they will have no rhyme or reason for the way they acted. Also, their puppeteer will have abandoned the strings by then. It will be just them and they will eventually realize that there simply is no ‘jannat’ in sight.
Like my mom always says, “The judgement day, heaven and hell are all here on Earth, my dear.”
