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Fighting terrorism with love, happiness, hope

Jun 06,2017 - Last updated at Jun 08,2017

Though, I totally believe in the significance of the security and military procedures to counter terrorism, and I fully respect them and provide my unlimited support.

However, and at the same time, I do understand that poverty, misery and despair form the environment for terrorism. And our duty, as a state and citizens, is to search for solutions to address them through the national project “Social Solidarity Fund” exemplifying the will of His Majesty King Abdulah to achieve this.

I do believe in our role, as business sector, in particular, with the backup of the state and the society as a whole, in creating job opportunities for our sons and daughters, the jobseekers (I do not allow myself to say unemployed).

This is a crucial priority in the fight against terrorism which will not be achieved unless through establishing an institutional system that meets the needs of jobseekers in the frame of a national project to qualify them to enter the labour market.

Since prevention is better than cure, I see the importance of fighting terrorism through immunisation to prevent it, similar to the way vaccination immunises against an epidemic.

Before and after all of this, we have to realise that we in this country enjoy the care of a King who looks after all of us as his own sons.

Thanks to his wisdom, we enjoy the blessing of security and stability in the most difficult regional and international circumstances.

We, as citizens, have to do our duty, in action not words, to safeguard peace and achieve social justice.

Therefore, I would make a few suggestions. 

One of the priorities of reforming academic programmes should be to remove all material, ideas and subjects that encourage violence, fear and hate.

Life taught me to love my foes (except the Zionist occupier), because their existence makes me more prudent to avoid mistakes and very keen to succeed so that they will not cheer my failure.

Academic programmes should concentrate on what nourishes our children with the culture of “love, happiness and hope”, because this is the way to achieve self-comfort and build our country.

To immunise our youth against terrorist recruitment, we need the culture of love rather than the culture of hatred, the culture of hope rather than the culture of despair.

We have to mobilise our institutions for the message of love, happiness and hope, including through our public and private media, seminars, public and private institutions.

What I learnt through the course of my suffering is that God blessed me when he tested me.

I said in my book titled “A Life Blessed by Suffering” that suffering is an opportunity for challenge and victory.

And in the children book “Talal Ibn Adiba”, we learn about the story of a child who enjoyed the blessings of suffering.

Both books are available for gifting.

Whatever our suffering was, let us look at the blessings that God gave us in our beloved homeland.

Terrorism has no place in a society of love, happiness and hope.

The society of solidarity against hunger is the strongest sanctuary against terrorist calls and messages.

I do not mean solidarity through donations and charities, but I ask God to reward those who give, I refer to the establishment of a national institutional project called, for example, the “National Fund for Social Solidarity”, which should have its own by-laws, procedures and sustainability to achieve social justice, in line with the directives of His Majesty the King in his 6th Discussion Paper.

We also need to have a national project to qualify our children to enter the labour market.

Our organisation signed a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Labour to launch the “Bawabati for Employment” initiative, which aims at providing jobseekers with training opportunity for employment purposes and whereby they acquire a certificate for lower wages than the recognised scales, but better than staying without a job and income and become a target of terrorist calls.

My instructors, thought leaders, have a duty to promote this culture because thought is stronger than weapons. 

As Victor Hugo said “an invasion of armies can be resisted; an invasion of ideas cannot be resisted”.

Each father, mother, brother, sister, uncle, grandfather and grandmother is responsible for raising our children.

Let them embrace the culture of love, happiness and hope to protect them from all sorts of deception by the powers of evil.

Recognising the importance of this culture, Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Knowledge Forum established a taskforce that is working diligently to prepare recommendations for spreading the message of love, happiness and hope as a culture.

It also established a taskforce that examines Jordan’s transformation into a knowledge society as the way to achieve a national gross domestic product that generates job opportunities, welfare and solutions to all financial and economic problems.

In conclusion, I reiterate what I always say to His Majesty: “I came to this country as a refugee who decided to make of the Palestinian suffering a blessing, and decided to make from the blessing of the Jordanian citizenship a message to serve the community. You gave me a second homeland that I am proud of, and you taught me to love its people. Thank you.”

 

 

The writer is chairman of Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Organisation (TAG-Org). He contributed this article to The Jordan Times

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