Open Letter to A Terrorist

A woman I know has asked me over and over again, “Why doesn’t someone try to reach out to the terrorists, and try to change their mind?” A good question, and always with a question like this the answer tends to be, well maybe someone will do it, but it should be done. There is so much to be said, but the best way is that it should be said simply, and from the heart. Yes, the brain is important and that’s where the words will come from, but the heart is what is needed to send a message to another heart. What she said, stuck with me and so, I decided to write this open letter to a terrorist.

This is an open letter to those that consider themselves terrorists or those that wish to conduct acts of terror. The word terror in the dictionary is described as an intense or overmastering fear. An overmastering fear is a fear that we cannot control and takes us over. I don’t believe that at any time when we were children we ever had the thought that we would want to aspire to instill in others an overmastering fear. It is my understanding and I may very well be wrong that your actions or planned actions have a depth and breath of reason to serve a cause. Your objective is to further your cause, but maiming and killing is giving your ideas and your cause the stench of death and destruction. The destruction of life tears away at the part of ourselves that makes us human and compassionate towards one another. To give in to the ideology that killing of innocent lives, and I say innocent because the targets have no understanding of your reason, nor is their a direct grievance with any of them, it is the randomness of chance, that selects them. If God has selected them, think again, that if you wish to do God’s works, they will not be covered with the blood of the innocent. Have faith that God will give you the tools that you need to create the changes that you want through peace, understanding and love. For God nothing is impossible, but if you give in to hatred and violence then you are saying that you have lost the belief, not that the power of love exists. For no power of hatred can overpower Love. Reach out and grab on to God’s love, the spirit to inspire and the power to do the impossible.