Keeping up with Kardashians!
“I want to be a martyr,” she told her parents.
After reading about the Glasgow young woman, Aqsa, I decided to do an experiment. In a little gathering on Friday night with my girl friends (who all have children between 7–19 years old), I asked them whether they have heard about the Glasgow girl, Aqsa. Puzzle-faced, they looked at me and answered “no, what about her? Who is she?” I said, “not so important, never mind,” and the was changed without any efforts.
We continued chatting, and nobody seemed interested to even find out what I was talking about. About 10-minutes later, I said, “ladies, does Kim Kardashian have a baby now?” Suddenly, they all looked at me like I’m from another planet. For the next 35 minutes, everybody is talking at the same time and the name “Kim Kardashian” was constantly being echoed in the air. These ladies had a lot of information about her; If nothing else, I learned so much about Kim Kardashian in such a short time.
A young British lady, Aqsa Mahmood, left U.K. in November 2013 to become ISIS bride. Aqsa received prestigious private education in Glasgow, Scotland. Her parents said, “we don’t know what happened to her.” They said that if this happened to our child who had freedom, a great life, and education, it could happen to any family.
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) estimates that there have been 63 homegrown violent Jihadist plots or attacks in the United States since September 11, 2001 (9/11). As part of a much-discussed apparent expansion of terrorist activity in the United States, from May 2009 through December 2012, arrests were made for 42 “homegrown,” jihadist-inspired terrorist plots by American citizens or legal permanent residents of the United States.
A Rand Corporation study published in August 2011 reviewed homegrown terrorism in the U.S. from September 2001 to December 2010 and found that the median age of a homegrown terrorist recruit is 27. These individuals are often very familiar with computers and the internet, and a growing number have elected to broadcast their activities through online social network web sites.
Zachary Adam Chesser is a 22-year-old Virginian son of a U.S. Government contractor. He participated in his school’s gifted and talented program. From mid 2008 to the summer of 2010, Chesser became a homegrown violent Islamist extremist. In July 21, 2010, Chesser was arrested by FBI. He is sentenced to 25 years in Federal prison with current date of release being April 30, 2032.
Whether the U.S. government can filter and screen online activities in a national scale without violating the first amendment of the Constitution. How would public respond to such action by the government and whether decrease in homegrown terrorist activities would justify monitoring online activities by the government?
Yet, as U.S. citizens and parents, aren’t we responsible to educate our children, spend quality time with them and keep them on track? After pointing finger at the government, we should also take some part in securing our homeland.
