On Thursday the US officials arrested one Fareed Mumuni on
suspicion that he was a terrorist. The 21 year old college student was linked
to a plot to cause terror using pressure cooker bombs.
Mumuni, a US citizen, comes from Ghana and his sister is
enlisted in the US Navy. Mumuni does not fit the stereo type of the angry black
man, averse to authority and prowling his neighbourhood in gangs that prey on
defenceless people.
Closer to home, this week the trial of 13 suspects all young
men, for the 2010 bombings at Kyadondo Rugby Club and the Ethiopian Village Restaurant
continued in the high court in Kampala.
The previous caricatures of terrorists as crazed, bearded
men from disadvantaged families with no options in life is fast flying out the
window.
In the western world stories are popping up all over the
media of the most unlikely youth heading for the Middle East to join the ranks
of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which is destabilising Syria and
Iraq.
Improvements in communication mean recruiters are reaching
potential initiates much further away from home.
Which has to be every parent’s nightmare. Your child may be
an ordinary person in his everyday life but you have no clue what messages are
getting through to him from all the media he is engaging with daily.
These groups recruit teenagers and young adults whose life philosophies
are unformed making them gullible and malleable to any message.
"Beyond the promises of a life in paradise pampered by a dozen virgins they are forcefed on a cocktail of hate ideology whose logical conclusion is that it is ok to die for the cause...
When I was a kid our parents’ worst fear is that we would
become thieves, in addition parents have these days worry about drugs, sexual
deviance and now terrorism.
When I was a kid our parents warned us against talking to
strangers, but the main fear was of strangers we came face-to-face with.
Parents today continue to warn against talking to strangers but now strangers
with perverse motives need not be in your physical presence.
And when I was a kid our parents were the main reference
point of what constituted acceptable behaviour. But now parents have to worry
about the effect of role models like Ben 10, The Amazing Spiderman, Kim
Kardashian and even Jack Bauer as the standard of behaviour their children
choose to adopt.
It is a brave new world.
"It doesn’t take much effort to conceive a kid but it takes a village to raise it. Unfortunately we have retreated behind high walls, into gated compounds and held hostage by smartphones. We are no longer our brothers’ nor his, children’s keeper. But the children still have to grow up and they are doing it the best way the can with the available influences around them, not all wholesome and predictive of a bright future...
So these young men before the high court reflect a failure
by our society.
A failure to spare time to impart values that would insulate
them from crack pot philosophies. A failure in our exposing them to images that
glorify, romanticise and sanitise violence. And failure in our refusal to
recognise that the world is a different place from one we grew up in and that
we need to be more involved in our children’s upbringing.
A parent’s work is never done.
