On radical muslim terrorists, violence, and other thoughts...

Just when we once thought that Al Queda, the radical muslim terrorist group that gained infamy from the 9/11 attack and made Osama bin Laden almost a household name, was bad, the muslim fundamentalists have suceeded in outdoing it by ISIS more than a decade later in terms of violence. While Al Qaeda under bin Laden was prone to staging well-planned spectacular attacks, ISIS and all the splintered groups these days resolve to the medieval means of beheadings and unorganized attacks (though no less deadly) by crazy individuals. Case in point: The lone gunman in the Sydney cafe attack, the hacking death of British soldier in just another street on British soil, the Boston Marathon bombing, and now the Paris mass shooting of a cartoon magazine (including the killing of Paris policeman in execution style). There are many more, too many to elucidate.

I'm sure I'm not the only one, but the senselessness of it all is bewildering. All these nutjobs - yes, I would only call them nutjobs, nothing more - profess grievances of various sorts, all in the name of Islam, but their methods are all the same which is to cause mayhem and induce fear in the western countries. 

I can't make sense of it because many of those those claims by these nutjobs are almost unrelated as one can get. Some are haters of Israel which, thankfullly to these terrorists, has given them more excuses to do so by suppressing the Palestinians in the occupied territory and the expanding Jewish settlement, (the latter of which is an entirely topic of discussions on its own).  Some, like the Boston Marathon bombers-brothers, cite the suppression of the muslim Chechens by the Russian government as reasons. Some, like the Paris shooting perpetrators, claim to avenge Prophet Muhammad in a cartoon a decade ago. Others just want to bring death and chaos to the infidels in general. 

Truth be told, I didn't pay that much attention to the Middle East in the past. Afterall it's as faraway a place in my head as one could get, and I never have that much interests in it. If the news don't mention Middle East that often about oil, and now the news about crazy groups like ISIS or Boko Haram and their dealings, I can't really care less, to be honest. 

I don't profess to know much at all about Islam the religion and the practice because Quran does not interest me. (Heck, I have probably made myself out as a target for the next attack by Muslim radicals by just saying that!) I did work with a few muslim guys in the past who were from Pakistan. Can one really form an informed opinion about a religion and as diverse as the different cultures that muslim populations around the world? Of course not. But we are what our experience makes us, and those few dealings with muslim folks have nothing unusual about it at all. The guys were fun-loving young guys, just another immigrants working in a western country, and they seemed to be have the time of their lives. We never probed that deeply about the meaning of religion and life, but I'd bet that they never did either.

And then there were the muslim students that I spent quite some time with at the college dorm. Those were muslim students sponsored by Malaysian government, and they were just cruising along on their government's dime. I don't want to generalize too much, but in this case, I have to. None of those muslim students on government sponsorship should have been admitted to grad school for a higher degree, in fact I don't think they could even pass the muster of a first degree. But the college administration wants the funding from the Malaysian government, and none of these lazy muslim indigenous students could be kicked out for academic incompetence. To call them muslims is probably an insult to the Islam religion because they did everything that muslims shouldn't have done - yes, even an infidel like me who don't know much about their religion know this much - including drinking, surf porn sites, eating everything (yes, pork, big time), and they even eat during Ramadan (just not publicly). Thinking back, I wonder if any of those lazy muslim students is now in some upper echelons of the Malaysian government. 

Don't get me wrong, they are just regular guys to me, but that's exactly the point. Some muslim fundamentalists make the West out as some land of infidels who are inferior to culture and practice than muslims. Truth is, many muslims are just as corrupted, they just don't say or do things in public to keep up their appearance of a pious muslim, is all.

Unfortunately, these young men are so impressionable, emulating their low station in life and grievances of their own (that they're just losers in general), that they have to find some higher purpose to exact their own grievances to the larger society they grow up in, the society that has given them a new lease in life (as in the case of the Boston Marathon brothers). These young men and women seem to be so gullible and ignorant that they can't even see through how ridiculous their claim is (like the case of avenging Prophet Muhammad in the Paris shooting when it's all just a goddamn satire, for goodness sake. Apparently, even these muslims - or maybe Islam in general? - never evolve with time and get civilized, as such, they are so thin-skinned in general that they cannot handle anything "bad" to be said about Islam, not even a satire. (But maybe they don't know what satire really is.)

My disappointment is that, moderate muslims (and I'm sure there are many more) do not speak out more forcibly against all these violence done in their name and their religion. Do they secretly condone such acts if only just to show the west their "real power"? Are they, as a loose group, so cowed that they are too afraid to speak up? It is only when they speak up against such violence, against the twisted interpretation of Islam, that they can become the counterweight of this worrisome trend of radical muslim spreading in Africa and Middle East, as groups like ISIS and Boko Haram are doing now, exacting great toll on their own people and the countries.

While I'm not against immigration - afterall, I'm an immigrant myself afterall, but one would call world citizen to live in various countries and continents - I'm against immigration without assimilation, which is exactly what is happening in Europe and other western countries that open its door to refugees and immigrants without ensuring that these folks are assimilated into the host countries. And if you ask truly, I would honestly tell you that while I don't mind hijab, I don't like seeing niqab on the streets at all.  And if those folks are truly so unhappy and harbor so much ill will in the western countries, why don't they leave and never come back? 

At this point, I'm just getting very sick and tired of hearing all these news. Maybe I'm getting lazy, and just want the problems to go away, rather than trying to figure out how to deal with the pandora's box of immigration, particularly the second-generations that are local citizens now, getting their ignorant radicalized and doing the bidding of others when they don't even have a rational reason to.