The attack of yet another young suicide bomber outside a Shiite mosque in Dammam on Friday, which killed three brave and valiant men who managed to stop this sadly misled person from entering the mosque and killing many more people, is testament to the fact that the demented terror group Islamic State (IS) is hell bent on provoking sectarian strife.
A video posted online that was filmed by a worshipper inside the mosque shows the exact moment the bomber blows himself off, the sound echoing through the building and scaring all 300 faithful who were inside. It seems that armed guards may now have to be positioned outside all Shiite mosques in the Kingdom in order to stop deranged bombers from entering and causing mayhem and destruction. This is a sad fact of life, but we must protect ourselves from the sick and twisted ideology of the IS, which is using the Internet to recruit disaffected youth and turn them against us and our society.
It really is a battle for the hearts and minds of our young men and women. In order to confront this challenge, all schools should be tasked with special curriculums to discuss these issues in an intelligent and appropriate manner, in order to both influence young minds and turn them to the right direction, but also as an early-warning system to detect those youth who are feeling abandoned and depressed.
The high rate of divorce in our society, and the frankly awful parenting skills of many of our mothers and fathers, is giving terrorist groups such as IS and Al-Qaeda the opportunities to attract and brainwash our youth, turning them into these fanatical suicide bombers.
The only positive things in this sad bombing on Friday were the many stories that came out about one of the three brave men that were martyred stopping the bomber. Abduljaleel Alarbash, 22, and a Saudi student at Wichita State University (WSU) in the US, had volunteered to search people entering the Anoud Mosque in Dammam. According to the Wichita Eagle newspaper, Alarbash’s father said his son confronted the bomber, who was wearing women’s clothes, when he became suspicious since women had been told to stay at home for Friday prayers as a security precaution.
All three young men chased the bomber and that is when he detonated his explosives, setting on fire several cars in the parking lot outside the mosque in the process. “To save the lives of hundreds of people was an act of a true Muslim and an act of a global citizen,” said Taben Azad, vice president of the Muslim Student Association at WSU, in an interview with the Wichita Eagle.
Abduljaleel had returned to the Kingdom to get married and was planning to return to Kansas this fall to continue his studies. According to fellow students and professors, he was an enthusiastic student and well-liked by everyone. “He sat in the front row of my class and was always smiling, no matter how difficult the material was,” said Preethika Kumar, an associate professor of electrical engineering at WSU. “I’m so glad I got to know him. He was wonderful,” she added.
While the IS can only undertake small-scale bombings here, in Iraq and Syria it was expanding this past week, invading and taking control of the cities of Ramadi and Palmyra. In the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra commentators seemed more concerned with what the IS zealots could do to the famous Roman ruins than with the thousands of refugees who fled the city on foot. In Ramadi, reports said a force of only 150 fighters of the IS managed to defeat 600 Iraqi soldiers, who after being attacked over six days with 26 tanks full of explosives, and after running out of ammunition, were forced to retreat. This led to a flood of criticism coming from Iraqi and American politicians. The Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister, Saleh Al-Mutlaq, complained to CNN, saying the willingness with which the Iraqi Army allowed Ramadi to fall into the hands of IS “surprised us all.” “This is not the army we want to see and it was not what we expect to see,” he added. In turn, the US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter said Iraqi troops in Ramadi were not outnumbered, and that they in fact vastly outnumbered the IS fighters. “And yet, they did not fight, they withdrew from the place,” said Carter, rather dishonoring the valiant fight that the Iraqi Army had put up. Mutlaq, who is Sunni, blamed the lack of will to fight against the IS among many Sunni Iraqis on the absence of hope in seeing a good future for them in Iraq after defeating IS. “If they do not see a future for themselves in Iraq, I do not think they will fight Daesh, the way we want,” he told CNN.
We must protect the Kingdom at all costs from the disintegration and chaos that Syria and Iraq are suffering at the hands of IS. Their bombing of Shiite mosques here must be our wake-up call that we have a very dangerous enemy among us, and that we must pay attention and fight back now before something more tragic happens.
