The difference between Cho Seung-Hui and a suicide bomber

According to Shekhar Kapur there is not much difference between Cho Seung-Hui and an average suicide bomber in Iraq. If you don’t know who Cho Seung-Hui is, he is that mentally disturbed boy who recently gunned down 32 students at Virginia Tech. Shekhar in his brief post says:

If this young man (Cho Seung-Hui) was in Iraq or Palestine, he would have been a suicide bomber and labeled simply as a Muslim terrorist. So while the world tries to understand why young Cho would commit such a tragic last act, I would ask the world to look at the young suicide bomber with the same analysis.

I think the fundamental difference between a killer like Cho and a Muslim suicide bomber is that for Cho it might be the end of everything, and for a Muslim suicide bomber, it is the beginning. Both the personalities need thorough socio-psychological analysis but they conduct mass killings for totally different reasons and that’s why a suicide bomber is more viscous (I know, a politically incorrect expression) than Cho. I don’t mean to undermine the death of those 32 students but I think it is easier to treat people like Cho compared to a terrorist because for a terrorist destruction is not a statement, it’s a jihad, a religious war.

People like Cho at least know that the gates of heaven won’t be flung open for them once they die. An average terrorist thinks that. Ills of society create people like Cho, but the terrorists create ill societies. A terrorist wants to destroy every thing that doesn’t fit in the template of his fundamentalist ideology.

Frankly, we all have reasons to become a terrorist. Even our neighborhood dhobi has a good reason to turn terrorist, but he has chosen to work under the burning sun and improve the lot of his family. Despite the ill treatment he receives as a daily cultural dosage he aspires for a better future for his family.

People that resort to terrorism deserve no sympathy. To an extent, Cho does.

And this is the basic difference between the societies. Imagine a terrorist saying this:

In front of Burruss on the Drillfield is a mountain of flowers and in front of the breathtaking pile a ring of 33 individual piles of flowers, notes, and other materials.

No, I did not mistype. Each death is remembered, including Cho’s. I am glad, for despite his actions he is a casualty of this mess as well. We all have dark times in our lives; it is unfortunate his consumed others’ as well.