Some will say that today we should be standing together. Some will say their thoughts and prayers are with the families of the children and adults murdered and maimed in Manchester. Some will say be strong United Kingdom and stand together. But what can be said or done in the face of the fact that last night someone decided to strap a home made device to themselves and walk into a concert arena full of children? What can possibly be said that makes any sense in a world where this can and does happen, anywhere, anytime, any place, even Manchester in the north of England which experienced last night what has been going on elsewhere in the world for years. What can be said in the face of such alienation from the self and the soul and what is means to be human?
The reality that we face is not that this can and is happening but the fact that it can and does happen now, anywhere. As we have descended collectively, with each horrific terrorist event around the world, we come to stand helplessly in the face of a generation of people who are alienated from what it means to be human. These terrorists, for whom life is meaningless, are unlikely to have ever reached a place where compassionate understanding of others is something they are capable of. Like abused children, these murderers are doing what they have learned to do at the hands of others. A generation of psychopaths for whom killing children is justifiable. The brainwashed, the alienated and these completely disconnected from what it is to be human, are in control of our lives and it cannot get better from here unless we stop standing in unity and start doing something about it.
But what can we do? This is for certain not something which is going to be stopped anytime soon and so the only way to begin to change this is to start at the source of the problem and remove the children who are at risk of growing up in a world of disconnected psychopathic beliefs, from the people who inculcate them. This may sound like a radical plan but as in all cult recovery systems, removal from mind control is the first major step towards healing. In this death cult, mind control is caused by the people who expose young children to the mind numbing images of murder in order to ensure that they are rendered devoid of compassion and any sense of human connectedness. It is caused by children’s immersion in a distorted belief system which teaches that that there is a right and just way to deal with grievances. Writing this is not an attack on Islam. As history shows, any religion, any belief system can be used to separate a young person from their compassionate understanding of human suffering. That this religion is being used by members of a cult to influence young people into believing that killing children (anywhere in the world), is a right and just act, is a reality in our present day. And it is this reality which we have to face and it is this reality that we have to think about in protecting the children of Islam and Christianity and Atheism right around the world.
It is not enough to stand together. It is not enough to send our prayers and our thoughts to the families of the murdered. We stand charged with the responsibility for doing something and in doing it, we must go to the source of the problem and protect young people from being used by this death cult. Education in schools about empathy and compassion is a start, taking responsibility for observing the disaffected young people in our communities and raising our concerns is another. Most of all asking for, pushing for and demanding that those who prey on the minds of young people are properly and permanently removed from their capacity to do so, is what will bring peace to the young people who are being encouraged to live a life of murderous intent.
It does not matter whether this is about Islam or any other religion in the world, when anything is being used to alienate young people from their sense of self and soul and what it means to be human, it is wrong and we should say it is wrong and we should do something about it. These young people are being used as conduits for the rage of psychopaths and in turn they are bringing another generation of murderers into our midst.
Love and compassion for others is our birthright. Separation from self and soul and what it means to be human in order to murder and celebrate murder is not.
Karen Woodall - Psychotherapist, Writer, Researcher, Trainer 
Absolutely agree with you Karen. Standing and doing nothing is NOT an option.
How I see it is that the main thrust must come from Islam because I believe that action by (let’s call it) the west is going to be ineffective. The good & great Muslims in the west must stand together and act against those in their midst who poison these mostly young men.
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And we must help where we can I think by assisting with knowledge about how young people are influenced and how their minds can be broken in order to prepare them to undertake such atrocities. It is a long time interest of mine that cult behaviour and alienation are so linked and to see this devastation which is a tragedy for every community in our world, is unbearable. I know it goes on in other countries all the time and I know that war is ugly and it is brutal and that children and adults were bombed in the second world war and in Vietnam and elsewhere in Syria today and so on but to sit and watch and say nothing is not an option for me anymore. I have dedicated my life to helping children and all children everywhere, those at risk of becoming suicide bombers and those who are killed by them need our love and determined protection. Today and always.
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We need to overcome hate with love. The problem is that it is impossible to deal with psychopaths as they cannot be reasoned with: somehow we must, as you say, prevent the older haters from teaching the young ones to hate.
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Thanks Karen for this elegant exposition of terror and how it is organised, so that it maps onto all the other forms of coercion and Alienation there are. These have so many core similarities as you sat from cults to what we know happens in families too. I think it’s worth underlining what you’re saying because it is still easy for readers to not get it.
Few media commentators either seem to get how the suicide bomber is brainwashed into their mission. Getting that message across to our security systems and to the world is essential. People might like to look at the OpenMindsFoundation.org which has precisely that aim to stop all harmful coercion and Undue Influence as its broadly known.
And thanks to you then for the clarion call to do more than just be horrified and to hold hands in shocked loving solidarity. That is a natural response but it really isn’t enough, as you say.
Based on the proper understanding you’ve described, we can know better what we need to do. If we don’t understand that it’s the same kind of severe cultic and family coercive control, the same inner and outer Alienation from ‘self and soul’ and from healthy outside relationships, then we will fail to intervene effectively with extreme terrorism.
Simplistic ignorant responses to those in cults and extreme terrorist groups are as ineffectual as simplistic ignorant responses to severe Parental Child Alienation.
Nick Child, Edinburgh
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Reblogged this on World4Justice : NOW! Lobby Forum..
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Reblogged this on Parental Alienation.
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Karen, your writing about alienated children is the very best and I’m immensely grateful, but on this topic I respectfully disagree. You ask “[w]hat can possibly be said that makes any sense” and refer to the terrorists’ lives as “meaningless.” Sharia supremacism [sharia as supreme law, higher than all other laws / constitutions] makes sense and provides deep meaning to those who advocate it. They’re trying to achieve their utopia and see our lives as meaningless. If the U.K. or any country announced it was adopting sharia, the terrorism would stop at once. It’s not senseless, random or meaningless. It is evil. The problem must be faced directly instead of creating a “fantasy islam”, islam as we would like to imagine it through our western minds.
“[The] public urgently needs to be educated about both the ideology of political Islam and the organizational
infrastructure called dawa that Islamists use to inspire, indoctrinate, recruit, finance, and mobilize those Muslims whom they win over to their cause.”
“There is no point in denying that this ideology has its foundation in Islamic doctrine. However, “Islam,” “Islamism,” and “Muslims” are distinct concepts. Not all Muslims are Islamists, let alone violent, though all Islamists—including those who use violence—are Muslims. I believe the religion of Islam itself is indeed capable of reformation, if only to distinguish it more clearly from the political ideology of Islamism. But that task of reform can only be carried out by Muslims. Happily, there is a growing number of reformist Muslims.”
-Ayaan Hirsi Ali, The Challenge of Dawa: Political Islam as Ideology and Movement and How to Counter it
Click to access ali_challengeofdawa_final_web.pdf
You ask what can be said or done. Ms. Ali and reformist muslims are guides to what can be said or done, if we’re willing to listen.
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Thank you David, I have downloaded this document and will read it through. As you know, my interest in alienation comes from the psychological not political perspective and I am always open to being educated further on all matters concerning how children are recruited and used by others. It does seem to me that life is meaningless to these people, I see from my first read of the intro that life lived under Sharia law is the only meaningful life for these people and that killing people who do not subscribe to that is their belief system in practice. This is psychological terrorism though, the people who are being made to believe this are being terrorised into believing it, just as in all cults, the leaders manipulate the mind to accept those things which are distant from the ways in which people who are connected to empathy and compassion for others might live. It seems barbaric to me, a return to medieval times and I am interested in how this path to this belief system has been driven. I will read it and will inform myself. My ears are open to Ms. Ali and anyone who can help to unpick this terror from within. I swing from rage to prayer and back again and feel helpless like so many others, but I will listen. My interest is always in anything that helps children to live in safety and peace. K
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Reblogged this on | truthaholics and commented:
The rightly-identified cult (a malignant offshoot of Wahhabism, itself a deviation from the mainstream) twists and distorts a great Abrahamic faith by promoting the murder of innocents – which mainstream Muslims reject outright as heretical because its core tenets are at variance with natural justice and any semblance of Abrahamic teaching. This appalling situation is exacerbated by rabid western military interventionism in lands with mineral resources to exploit by illegal regime-change.
Cui bono?
The roots of ISIS lie in Mossad and the CIA and covert training camps in Jordan and Libya.
The hidden cost of bomb first, aid later is too high.
This cult has a name, Takfiri salafism.
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I dare say they don’t need a hate preacher to be radicalised either and we will see a rise in the self radicalised, they can turn on the mainstream news, review history as told by the feminist west and be radicalised, because as the mainstream wants us to believe white Europeans are to blame for everything, especially the men.
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