Sri Lanka Bombings : An Addition to the Connection of Wealth and Extremism
Recent history has shown that people with comfortable lives can be easily drawn towards violent extremism. On Easter Sunday In Sri Lanka the lives of 350 people were taken in a series of bombings. Police and soldiers of the country immediately reported to the incident, but were taken by surprise when the location they had arrived to was one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in Colombo, it was in Dematagoda. Arriving at the scene the two suspects were identified as two brothers who lived with their families, one being a copper factory owner, and his brother who the wealth was shared with. Their father was also in the home, Mohamed Yusuf Ibrahim, one of the most successful business people in the island nation's Muslim community, he had made a fortune exporting spices. The two brothers were involved in the jewelry trade and were both among the attackers. In an interview with CNN, the prime minister of Sri Lanka stated that the suspected bombers were upper and middle class, and were well educated abroad, a profile he described as "extremely surprising". His surprise regarding the suspects was widely shared, many people still find it very difficult to understand how those with comfortable lives can be drawn into extremism, and kill themselves and hundreds of innocent people. This question is not new at all, and has been asked many times before. In Europe, it became an issue in the 1970s when relatively well-off young men and women in Germany, Japan, Italy or the US began to engage in violent activism. With the spread of suicide tactics in the 1980s and early 1990s, it seemed more perplexing than ever. Then came a wave of Islamic militancy, with attacks of unprecedented lethality. None of then men who flew planes into the World Trade Center in New York in 2001 faced economic hardship. The leader of their organisation, Osama bin Laden, was the construction tycoon. One of the Easter Sunday Bombers attended Kingston University in south-west London from 2006-2007, where he studied aeronautical engineering, and then went on to study in Australia. From a wealthy tea trading family based near the central city of Kandy, he had attended top international schools- as had other bombers, it appears. There are several examples of terrorists with good educational qualifications among Islamic militants. The current leader of al-Qaida, Ayman al-Zawahiri is qualified pediatrician, while two thirds of the 9/11 attackers had degrees. Is this connection a coincidence? Or can it be considered a fact?
great blogpost!! It's very sad to hear though that many innoccent lives were taken away and how cruel people are all around the world and many things like this happen everyday whether its bombings or shootings.
ReplyDeleteLooking at an extremist group is very interesting as you have so many layers and so many people who contribute to the over all cause. In this instance one would focus on the leader and the followers. I think that all of the major acts being carried out by well educated and wealthy people is something that may seem hard to grasp but is actually very logical in itself. When one is well educated they know how to manipulate people and have a background on how the world functions and how they need to go about their so called "mission". The other factor of money would only be logical as well due to the fact that when one has money it is easier to get your hands on the things you need whether it'd be legally or illegally. One is also more likely to follow and support someone who is well educated and has money than one who is not.
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