The most alarming aspect is the development of the student’s inclination towards radicalised religious literature
KARACHI: Until very recently, religious inclination and militancy have always been correlated to derive a plausible equation to track down those involved in terrorist activities. However, over the past few months, numerous cases of educated youth hailing from moderate family backgrounds engaging in religious extremist activities have been reported.
A couple of days back, a news story reported a US IT grad from Peshawar, who allegedly joined the ISIS after fleeing to Afghanistan, through Torkham border. The most alarming aspect is the development of the student’s inclination towards radicalised religious literature during his study programme in the US. This makes room for the conundrum of religious extremism being a phenomenon embedded deeply into the Western societies too. Regardless of the fact that in this case, extremist ideology seems to be an export of the West, proclivity towards extremism and joining a terrorist network spread globally remains a question yet to be answered.
Mariam Saif
Published in The Express Tribune, September 16th, 2017.
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