Stop Terrorism Before it Kills Us All

Let me start by mourning all those whose lives were lost since the start of 2015, including the 22 Zamalek fans, the 21 Copts killed by ISIL, the soldiers killed in Sinai, the hundreds killed by ISIL in Syria and Iraq, the three Muslims killed in the Chapel Hill shooting and the two people killed in the Copenhagen tragedy.

It is with deep sorrow that we start this semester that way. The Caravan joins the American University in Cairo in its mourning week. These tragedies must be acknowledged and remembered.

May all their souls rest in peace.

According to the Merriam Webster Dictionary, terrorism is the use of violent acts to frighten the people in an area as a way of trying to achieve a political goal.

However, I think that nowadays, terrorism is instead used to achieve religious extremist goals.

It is very disgusting that religious extremism has become a valid excuse for acts of terrorism. No human deserves to die in the gruesome, vile way carried out by the terrorist extremist group ISIL. Our blood shouldn’t be that cheap.

Writing this piece is one of the hardest things I’ve had to do in my life. There are no words I can use to describe how I feel about what has been going on around me. There are no words I can use to explain how heart breaking the situation has been.

We lost 21 Egyptian Copts because of people who call themselves Muslims when, really, what they do contradicts anything Islam has taught us.

These vile terrorists know nothing about Islam and are the kind of psychopaths who contribute to our peaceful religion’s bad reputation.

At around the same time, in another continent, three Muslims were also killed because of a hate crime. A couple of days later, a Danish film-maker at a freedom- of-speech debate, and a Jewish security guard at a synagogue were shot dead in Copenhagen by a native man born to Palestinian parents, according to The Guardian.

Is this really the world we are living in right now? These terrorist attacks are just beyond belief.

All these people were killed because of the continuous hatred that the world has been facing over the past few years.

Terrorism is a very dangerous tool that extremists have been using to scare people and force them to follow their same ideology. It has neither a religion nor a nationality.

All governments around the world should find a way to stop it. Last Wednesday, according to Egypt Independent, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi “warned that Egypt would strike back at any militant threats to its security as he toured the border area with Libya, two days after Cairo bombed Islamic State targets there.”

I, for one, am very proud of how our government has responded to these acts of terrorism and I deeply believe that all the world organizations should take a stand and follow our government’s footsteps. Stop terrorism before it kills us all.