Heroes Against Terror

All over our existence Humans have shown and incredible capacity for the creation of horror and misery, for the construction of oppressive systems, for building a hell with bricks of fear, repression and pain, both for the minds and for the bodies. We've certainly have exceeded on that, but as depressive as it sounds it's also inspiring, as all these stories of horror, all these monstrosities have led to a counterpart, to stories of dedication and sacrifice for the others, human beings willing to give their lives to save others from those horrors, looking for no other reward than the awareness of being doing what their morality dictates them as correct. It can be those saving innocent Jews from the orgy of blood of Nazism, or volunteers running to unknown places to save unknown souls from diseases which dangers they know well, or Kurdish heroes saving Yazidis from the madness of IS...

Fundamentalist Islam, Salafism, or whatever denomination we give to that sickening ideology built upon the perverted misinterpretation of the Muslim faith is the biggest threat to human freedom and dignity that has ever existed, and hence it requires from the biggest stories of human sacrifice to protect others from it, combat it and eventually destroy it and wipe off any traces of it from this planet. In the last weeks I've written about the fight of the Kurdish fighters against IS, I've read about left wing Turkish warriors or Western volunteers joining the Kurds in their war against madness, and it's things like those that renew my faith in humanity, in our capacity to overcome all the many other horrors we've created, from ecological catastrophes to economical ones.

Today I've read a beautiful piece of inspiration in The New York Times, an Arab (Jordanian) comic writer trying to combat the indoctrination conducted on kids by radical Islamists. There's been a lack of "normal" heroes for the Muslim kids, there's not an "Arab Superman" or "Arab Spiderman", and Islamists have tried to sell Bin Laden or IS scum as heroes, as the role model, and this guy is confronting that by creating a Universe of heroes in his comics that can counteract the poison instilled by fundamentalists. Normal heroes that try to help others rather than chop the heads of the "infidels". It's very interesting, not only for this particular case but on a broader sense. It all comes down to the same, we can call it heroes, sources of inspiration, guides... in one degree or another we all need them, it's what the first paragraphs of this post have been about, our need to see some light in the empty darkness that we've created.