Muslim Vs. Terrorist

Bismillah al-rahman al-raheem,

Not as cliche as the title, I will not touch upon anything that you, the readers (mcm la banyak!) already know. I was surprised to know that my Arab teacher, who has been teaching me in Near Eastern Study class is actually a Christian. Why? What's wrong with that? Nothing is wrong, but I admire his broad knowledge and the way he viewed the world's upheavals. He told the history of the great gunpowder Islamic empires and the flaws of the Christian crusaders without hesitation. He knew that there is no point hiding the real historical discourse when the evidences are right before their eyes.

One of the purposes of this course is to educate the folks on the actual teaching of Islam and how misleading the media has been for so many years. After the 9/11 "attack", the event somehow promoted the growing sense of fear among the people, that Muslim are equivalent to terrorist, that the Arabs are all Muslim and therefore, the Arabs are also terrorists. Later, the West, favored by the bias media, speculated the term "jihad" to a very misleading meaning. Jihad, in the view of the "not-yet-educated" West (at that time) are those who practice extreme behavior to an extent killing etc. They also came out with a more fancy-grammatically-wrong word to describe these people to be a "jihadist". ???!!!! Really???!!

Let's examine the beautiful meaning of jihad:

To strive, to struggle and to lead a peaceful life. Does this somehow fits into the context of "jihad" that has been speculated around today? A small kid walking through a street to go to school is making a jihad, a father who is struggling to cater his family's need is making a jihad and even a devoted wife cooking for her beloved husband is making a jihad. 

We shouldn't pretend as if Arabic is our first language to come out with our own personal meaning(s) about jihad. We shouldn't stereotyping people just because bad apples in their culture are creating chaos in the world. There always bad apples in one's culture, does that mean the whole apple tree is unworthy of living? If you consider yourself a human being, you have to accept that the Muslims are also human being who deserve human rights, as you do!

Wallahu'alam

*agak-agak kalau cikgu baca ni, dah puji dia lebih-lebih, boleh kasi free A tak? (provided google translate terjemah betul-betul post nih)