Chances are, if you’re reading this, you are most likely kept up-to-date on current world events to some fair degree.
Yes, it’s unfortunate that more than 150 people have died in last night’s terrorist attack in Paris, but in times when such loss of life counts as less than a footnote in the grander scope of human history in its entirety, what we, as citizens of a global society, should do, is view this recent act of aggression as the attack on culture that it was, and act accordingly.
Paris has long been romanticised (rightfully so, I suppose) as a city of immense cultural significance, where thoughts and ideas mingle and flow freely at each and every nook, cranny, and crevice just as much as the bodily fluids of its denizens.
This is the third time in less than a year that Paris has been subjected to ideology-driven brutality at the hands of religious zealots who seek to carve the world in a bleaker, more medieval image.
A stadium, a restaurant, a musical concert venue, and the centre of Paris’s nightlife -- it’s likely that the attack was made in direct retaliation to France’s recent involvement in sorting the hot mess that Syria has found itself in for some time now (one of the assailants was apparently heard violently citing that fact, wedging the French president’s name in there as well), but the exact locations which the terrorists chose to “cleanse” leaves little room for interpretation.
The world is slowly but steadily shaping up to being the global village that certain academics and philosophers had envisioned at some point in the past.
And Bangladesh is not excluded from being included in that theoretical burg.
Our diminutive nation has been witnessing a small-scale cultural renaissance, so to speak, with artists from various spheres making pilgrimages to the nation of Bengal and exposing us to a world that goes beyond the ektara and glorified cover artists echoing Kazi Nazrul Islam and Rabindranath Tagore ad verbatim -- a direct result of our slow ascension up the global economic ladder, perhaps.
If the terrorists had their way, there would be nothing of this sort -- and what further proof do we need than the recent, rather indiscriminate killings of a few foreign faces which were here staying in Bangladesh for entirely different reasons altogether?
It’s been said before -- and that only works to expose the blinding ignorance of our government regarding this issue -- but it’s something that has to be regurgitated until the nail has been driven through the brick wall: We are not safe. As a country that houses a Muslim majority population (of varying degrees of piousness), we are not safe.
Furthermore, as a country that is trying to drag itself out of the primordial soup of poverty and cultural retrogression, we are not safe from being targeted by men who would rather see the entire world go back than let a small nation, that they think they should be able to dictate, progress.
I want to make it clear that I do not speak from my sense of insensitivity (something I honestly do possess) when I gloss over the horrendous incident -- and it truly is horrendous -- which has taken place in Paris and instead take the opportunity to drum up similar incidences that have occurred in our country.
It makes little sense to waste time in mourning individual deaths and engage in wild whodunits, when the air is so thick with dread and the stench of bullets, bombs, and blood wafts in crossing time and space.
Far from hunting the monsters down, we need to fortify our own little settlement first, and the only people who we can count on for that are too busy mistaking pigeons for wyverns.