NAIROBI, Kenya, Dec 12- My first encounter with the word terrorism was on a warm Friday morning in August 1998.
I had just closed school the previous day, and had woken up at 9am, was drinking tea and watching movies in our living room, as the rest of the household went by with their daily activities.
My big brother ran a furniture business from our house and the carpenters were hammering away, while chatting about life, when a huge thud that shook the ground happened a few minutes to 10am.
Soon enough the house was full of dust, and thinking about it now, even the old dust that had settled underneath the carpet, rose into the sky.
There were no cell phones then, only landlines, and it wasn’t until I watched the 1pm news that I got a full understanding that something really bad had happened.
As a 14-year-old, I didn’t think much of what had happened, or realized how, the events of the day had affected my own family.
My father worked a few blocks from the blast site and had been searched for desperately by my mum, all day.
My mum worked at Kirinyaga road, as a personal assistant in a motor vehicle parts store, she realized soon that she needed to get out of town and walked to the treasury building looking for two people, that morning, my father and auntie who worked on the 13th floor.
Her desperate wait to see any of them rush out of the building, bore fruits when her sister came running into her arms, and the two sisters hugged and cried in each other’s arms for over a minute.
That act of love, makes me sometimes realise the two bonds that humanity brings that doesn’t see color, race or religion.
My mum is a Muslim and her family isn’t.
I have lived and been raised by blood relations on both sides of the religious divide and have a front row understanding at how this sometimes can split families apart.
But that is a discussion for another day.
It wasn’t until 3pm that my mum, her sister, my sister and big brother came home, each one explaining where they were when the blast went off and how they navigated the chaos to reach home whether on foot or via taxi because public transport had been heavily affected that day.
My father came home really late that evening, and while I pretended to be asleep, I could hear him telling his side of how the events of the day plaid out and how he managed to get to safety.
My kin weren’t hurt physically, but the emotional toll the blast had on them, they carry with them to-date and each time she talks about that day, my mother gets emotional.
One question my aunty asks me, is why? Why would one kill in the name of God?
I still can’t answer her to her satisfaction but what I know, is that sometimes those who use God’s name to harm, misinterpret the guiding light that the Holy book offers to the Ummah.
What is Jihad? It is the ability to fight off anything that hinders one from walking in the righteous path.
To begin with, keeping your desires in check, practicing the five salah prayers every day, fasting frequently and during Ramdhan, reading Quran and living its wisdom, are to me, one of the highest levels of jihad where one conquers the battle against will.
But while I thought the events of that day would be the last, the attacks kept on coming, while the actors changed tact with each new act of terror.
What was previously described as a terrorist changed into young people who have bright minds, being offered a life in heaven, where milk and honey flows in rivers.
One question that some of my Christian friends ask me, is how the issue of 72 virgins in heaven came about.
That may need the counsel of religious scholars, to give explanation on that word.
Over the years, more and more young people like myself have been lured into a faraway land, with the dream of making good money, but what they never fully understand while crossing the border is that the price, they pay for that action is heavy, and it takes a huge toll on the families they leave behind.
In certain parts of the coast, the tag,” returnee” is a taboo word for many who have once crossed into unchartered waters, seeking religious redemption in a war that I find difficult to understand.
The very men and women who kill the “infidels” in the name of Allah, are the very same ones who kill, rape and maim their own brothers in the ummah, for unknown reasons.
The blast in Mogadishu that killed about 60 students on their way to University was heart wrenching, unwarranted and purely sad. I always ask myself, what would the prophet (PBUH) do, at that moment?
How would he guide the ummah on how to fight jihad and which scenario presents a need to pick up arms to fight for our faith?
How come some of the scripture is misinterpreted to satisfy the interests of a few over the greater good.
The holy Quran, says that he who kills even a butterfly shall face the wrath of the creator and how who spares the life of even a mosquito shall see favor of God.
It is a human to have two powerful emotions for and against each other, love or hate.
Coming from a religiously blended family, I have learnt the art of tolerance, fighting fair and understanding each other in the way we are different.
I fell that the world needs much more understanding today that never before, as people take strong beliefs and use this as gluing lights towards hate, discrimination or even harm against fellow man.
Unfortunately, terror isn’t religiously instigated only, racial terror is real in some parts of the world, idle and sometimes ignorant minds are filled with strong antirace, religious sentiments that are sometimes hard to erase.
I believe this is worse than opium addiction, and can make man, become evil and filled with hate in their hearts.
The latest propaganda showing men who butchered innocent civilians in an Nairobi attack, calling them martyrs is appalling and quite frankly a slap on the face of the families that lost livelihoods or live without loved ones lost.
The sad things are that even those many look up to are the same ones propagating hate, calling out those different form them and making them targets of extreme violence.
In certain parts of the world, Muslims have died and been mistreated at the hands of a different kind of terror, Bosnian Muslims were butchered in the early 1990s, a similar fate faces Uighur Chinese citizens, and Muslims in Myanmar who have been forced off their homes and rendered into a life of misery and death.
In every way you look, terror rears its ugly head, in society and depending on which point of view you have, one will always see the other as the more-evil player.
We need love, light and more knowledge, the good book tells us live, love, pray and let God.
The writer, Laillah Mohammed, is a member of the Crime Journalists Association of Kenya-CJAK. She is a practicing journalist with NTV-Kenya and based in Nairobi, Kenya.
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