Understanding Terrorism
by Leah Solara
Copyright © December 2001 Heart Links / All Rights Reserved

God created the heavens and the earth. As far as the eye could see there was nothing but beauty and order. They lived in a paradise beyond anything our eyes have ever seen.

Then chaos, an insidious negativity that wanted to penetrate everything that God had created and ruin it, showed up. Since then nothing has ever been the same. We have never been able to recapture that joy and innocence we knew, before our separation from God.

For perhaps hundreds of thousands and definitely thousands of years, terrorism has existed in one form or another, because God had no choice but to allow it to exist in the beauty and joy He had created for the human race. Many men have blamed women for that choice ever since, but interestingly enough it is only men who have an Adam's apple.

Women have been an easy target for men to hang their frustrations, anger, insecurities and shame on, persecuting them with impunity, from time immemorial. They have forced women to undergo treatment that no man would have stood for, yet forced onto them with dire threats to their very lives and all they held dear. This is terrorism at its most basic roots, and perhaps the rudimentary foundation for what we now know as religion.

There were the Mongolian hoards led by Genghis Khan and later his son Kubla Khan who ravaged the people in many countries. Then there was Hannibal and Alexander The Great. After that, came the Romans. They all wandered over the known world, conquering the people in every land they discovered. This is part of history, but it was also terrorism.

After the fall of the Romans, the Vikings became more predominant and terrorized the British Isles, among other places. It was said they took the most beautiful women home with them from the countries they raided, in order to make their race more handsome. This was terrorism.

In the new world, before it was settled by Europeans, there were tribes of native people who had lived in harmony with the land for thousands of years. They were called Indians by the first explorers, who came to that new world.

These Indians were very curious about the explorers, despite the fact that they didn't understand them. When those same explorers took over without regard to the rights of the Indians, carving up the land they revered as their mother, I am sure they felt troubled. However, when they violently separated many of them from their wives, their husbands and their children and put them in chains forcing them into slavery in a country they had never seen before, they were terrified. This was terrorism.

Of course most history books only tell the white settlers side of the story about being terrorized by the Indians, once they learned to fight back. They usually avoid the part about U. S. cavalry soldiers, whose job it was to protect the settlers, broke treaty after treaty and attacked the Indians on the same land they had been given by the newly formed United States government, driving them out. This was terrorism.

Millions of Indians and whites were killed, because of the lack of respect for the Indians ways and religion by the settlers. Some Indian tribes were wiped out by the slaughter of human lives that took place in what is now known as the United States. This was terrorism.

In the eastern part of what was then the colonies, white men plotted against the tribes of Indians to wipe them out, by giving them warm blankets that had been used for white Smallpox victims. Entire tribes were ravaged by the disease they had no immunity to. Again this is part of our history, but this was also one of the first acts of bacterial warfare. This was terrorism.

As more land was taken over by the white settlers, they demanded that much of the land the Indians had been allowed to keep be taken back because gold, oil and other natural resources were discovered there. When the Indians realized they would never be dealt with honestly and fairly they tried to fight back.

Many of the young warriors banded together with other tribes to build a stronger force against those who seemed to be trying to exterminate them. Because they tried to protect their land and their way of life as well as their wives, children and the elders of the tribe, calvary soldiers were ordered to attack them–sometimes when they were sleeping. This is terrorism.

I am sure the soldiers, who went up against the native warriors in the elements they had lived in all their lives, felt frightened, intimidated and vulnerable in this strange land. Their government sent them to fight against an enemy that may have been so emotionally overwhelming, it drove many of them into an insanity from which they could not escape. This was terrorism.

Finally, the Indians went from living on land that was all they had ever known, to being rounded up like criminals. They were taken to live on reservations in foreign parts of the country where they had never been. Often they were not even given time to bury their loved ones–babies, toddlers, mothers, fathers, grandparents, aunts and uncles, who died along the way.

The men, women and children as well were whipped, hit with the butts of rifles and beaten if they didn't walk fast enough. Many of you may have heard of the Trail Of Tears. This was terrorism.

There were many trails of tears, not just one. Thousands died from exposure, starvation and brutal wounds from soldiers and guards that considered the Indian people to be savages that deserved everything they got. This was terrorism.

Once they got to the reservations crooked Indian agents furnished little food, much of which was rotten or filled with bugs. Whether you are aware of this or not it did happen, right here in the United States. Even the Franciscan Fathers had native men, who were like little children in the ways of the Europeans and Spaniards, executed and brutalized for not believing in their version of religion. This was terrorism.

For thousands of years black men and women were rounded up and forced into slavery. They could be found all over the Middle East, in Rome, in Greece, throughout Europe and eventually in the United States. Unspeakable things were freely done to them and they were openly tortured as if they were some kind of animals.

Women were ripped from their husbands arms, children from the arms of their fathers and mothers without conscience. This has served to decimate the family structure in blacks that many of them are still trying to recover from, hundreds of years later. This was terrorism.

Throughout Europe kings and queens abused the power of their positions and enslaved their people to make war on neighboring countries. This often resulted in starvation of the masses, because there were too few farmers left to produce food. Often diseases that accompany malnutrition plagued the peasants and townships, resulting in premature death and a horrible quality of life. This was terrorism.

When someone breaks into our homes and ransacks them, they invade our most private places. They leave us feeling exposed, abused and vulnerable. This is terrorism.

When gangs of teenagers come against each other in the streets of America killing innocent bystanders, people become afraid to leave their homes and live their lives. This is terrorism.

When people who have businesses are told they have to pay money to muscle men for protection they'll never get, and fear for their lives if they don't pay the money, our streets are not safe. This is terrorism.

When a woman is walking through a park or down a street in any city in this country and gets assaulted by men to the point that she becomes frightened that they will do more than just push her around, she often becomes paralyzed. Men are usually much taller, weigh more and are much stronger than women.

When men push their brute strength against women they are giving them a very powerful message. They are telling them that they can hurt them if they want to. They are telling them that they are not safe no matter where they go, and that no one will protect them. This is terrorism.

When people prey upon others to hurt them, get their money, frighten them to force them into doing what they desire for them to do, their victims feel vulnerable and paralyzed. This is terrorism.

It is time for us to realize and understand that we are all connected. When you take a breath you are breathing in the same molecules that someone else already breathed somewhere else. You and I are not alone in this world, we are all connected. Especially in this country at this particular time.

We have to come to realize that we are now involved in a war against terrorism as well. It is a war that effects all of us.  However, the stakes are different in this war. The weapons are far more dangerous and the minds of the terrorists have so many more examples to draw from.

What drives the mind of a man or woman to become a terrorist? Usually desperation, the feeling of powerlessness and the feeling of being discounted. What kinds of experiences did these people have that has brought them to the brink of the insanity of terrorism? Often only God knows.

This is what is so frightening about terrorism. There is an insanity that grabs the terrorist to the point that they will actually sacrifice their own lives in order to get even with another group of people because of their way of life, their religion or the color of their skin.

The insanity will not be reasoned with, it will not listen to anything but that insidious negativity that fans it and drives it to the brink of destruction. This is why so many people are frightened in this country.

This is what the terrorist counts on. He or she wants those they are terrorizing to feel frightened, because it makes them feel powerful. They also like their victims to be frightened because they can be controlled.

Terrorists want the people they are terrorizing to stop their way of life. They want the government business to break down and stop. They want the farmers to stop producing food and products for clothing. They want people to feel paralyzed. This makes them feel like they're in control.

Terrorists want their victims to feel like some sort of prey because this makes them seem to be so much bigger, so much more fierce and so much more threatening. These are the things that terrorists count on in order to gain power over their victims.

What drives a terrorist to want to control other people? What drives a man to beat his wife into submission so he can control her? What drives a woman to nag her husband into submission so she can control him? What drives a bully to pick on those he or she treats as weaker than themselves, driving them into submission?

The one common link is fear. The bully is afraid of those he or she picks on. This is why they call them names and belittle them to the point that they believe what is being told to them.

They are tricked into believing that they are nothing and much weaker than the bully. Because the bully doesn't want them to know how weak he or she really feels inside, they keep hammering away at their victim.

No matter how low the victim bows it is never enough. The bully has to keep reinforcing that the victim is nothing so they can believe they are powerful.

The same is true of the husband who beats his wife. She is told that she is nothing and that she would amount to nothing if it weren't for him. The same is true of the wife who nags her husband. She picks on everything he does, causing him to feel like nothing without her.

The same is true of a terrorist. They feel powerless and have to control their victims by convincing them that they never know when they will strike again. They thrive on the element of surprise. They do this in order to have power over their victims.

The truth is that they only have the power their victims give to them. The people who allow themselves to be controlled by a terrorist do not believe in themselves. They see their leader as being very powerful, because he or she believes themselves to be above the law.

In order for the terrorist to keep his or her followers believing the lie about their power, they have to constantly keep them busy doing things over and over, so they don't have time to think for themselves. So long as they're not able to think for themselves the followers are able to be controlled by the terrorist. They're kept so busy following the terrorist they fail to realize that they could have power over their own lives so they won't need that person or any other person to feel fulfilled.

Osama bin Laden is the son of one of his fathers numerous wives. He was not afforded as much love and attention as he deserved and even craved because his father, like so many other men in our world today, was too busy to give him all he needed. His time had to be divided between his business, his many wives and his many children, all needing something from him.

I am sure there was a great deal of competition between Osama bin Laden and his siblings. They embraced the western way of life and attached themselves to things in the United States. This was unacceptable to him, because he believed that they were going against their Muslim upbringing.

Before his father died it is said that he told his son he wanted him to help with the fight against Israel, to help their Palestinian brothers. Then his father was killed before he was able to carry out some of the things he wanted to do.

Osama bin Laden, being a good son, wanted to please his father and gain his approval. In some way he may have even felt obligated to fulfill what he believed his father wanted to accomplish. However, he died prematurely, before they were able to carry on what they wanted to do together.

He took that spark his father had given him and ran with it. He turned that spark into a flame that burned larger and more threatening every day.

He learned all the ways to multiply his money from big business men all over the world, all the while hating everything they stood for. However, he wasn't above using them to achieve his goal, which is world domination.

Osama bin Laden is a new kind of terrorist. He is not like those of ancient times and he is not like Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin or Nikita Khrushchev.

They were all fairly straight forward with their terrorism. It was pretty much out in the open and could be tracked much more easily. With Osama bin Laden, his terrorism is covert. This is why it is so frightening to some people. They never know what he is going to do.

A war where everything is out in the open is much easier for soldiers to deal with. When they have to constantly watch their backs for an unknown and unseen enemy, it becomes much more unsettling.

Men like to have a plan to go by and they like to follow it all the way. They are willing to be prepared for the unexpected, but they always have their familiar plan to fall back on. It makes them feel comfortable and in charge.

When the plan has to be thrown out and they have to fly by the seat of their pants, it becomes much more threatening and frightening because they have nothing to fall back on that is familiar. Everything is new and unfamiliar, and this is unsettling to them.

This is what Osama bin Laden is counting on. He is hoping that the people in the United States will panic. If they do then there will be total chaos in this country, and our allies will be weakened by our power being diluted.

He keeps hammering away at the United States in everything he says, but Osama bin Laden really wants to bring the entire world under his version of Islam. A version that brings absolute control over the majority by a small insane and frightening minority.

Why does this work so well? Because people are terrified of insanity. It is an insidious energy of negativity that reaches down into our souls to rip away the chest filled with faith in God that is housed there.

Negativity wants to rip away that chest filled with faith, because once it is gone it can gain a strong foothold against us. It knows that we are often powerless to fight against its relentless attack on our innocence and childlike wonder about the world we live in.

It knows how difficult it is for the child to fight against that attack because it often comes in the form of the people the child should be able to trust the most, the parents. It knows that millions of people all over the world have grown up with the kind of treatment that takes on some part of the face of insanity, because it is that face. It has been instrumental in creating dysfunctional families all over the world.

Families where the father was there to sleep, perhaps carve the turkey at Thanksgiving and Christmas and spend two or three hours a week with his children. Families where the mother often had to fill the role of both parents and missed her husband and partner, but felt like she really didn't have any other options.

Families where the mother cried herself to sleep because she was married, living in a city where she may have been surrounded by people, but felt totally alone. Families where the husband and father was driven by an employer or a job that constantly kept him from his wife and children more and more until he felt like all he was good for was bringing home money.

This is what happened to the Osama bin Ladens of the world. They have been robbed of their chest of faith, by negativity. They would most certainly disagree with this, but the truth is that they place their new found faith in that which will almost certainly brings death and destruction to them and all who follow them.

Now Osama bin Laden, accompanied by all the tortured souls that stand with him, has put on that face of negativity. The face of insanity that tricks him into believing he is invincible.

The longer he wears that face the more unreasonable he may become, and the more he is convinced that he was born to be the savior of the world. Then he may begin to trust no one, not even his closest advisors.

Then the paranoia may begin to increase causing more bizarre behavior. This is what makes him seem scary to sane people, who are able to be reasoned with. The longer he wears that face the more unreachable he may become, until no one is able to reason with him. This is when his mind may begin to break down and he may begin to live in a fantasy world, made up of his own paranoia and demons.

At this point, often those who are the most loyal and the closest to ones like bin Laden are under the most scrutiny. These are the ones they take their frustrations out on, especially when things don't go exactly as expected.

This may be when they may become more driven by that negativity, into an even deeper level of paranoia. They may become more sleep deprived, as their behavior may also become more erratic.

At this point they may begin to hallucinate and even take to shooting their own people, because they truly believe they are being disloyal to them. This is what was reported happened to Saddam Hussein during and shortly after the gulf war. It became widely talked about that he had become very volatile and had resorted to shooting his own military officers.

It may well be that Osama bin Laden has placed his hope and the hope of those who follow him, in the belief that the way of life of the people in this country will be their undoing. He may be focusing on the United States, but it is reasonable to think that he is really waiting to take over the entire world.

He truly believes that his way of life, that of connecting himself to men who proudly persecute and beat women into submission, force men to wear beards of a minimum length and force them to fight and bear arms against those who criticize their unfairness is a noble thing to do.

The Taliban has shown a total lack of respect for the God given rights of the individuals who reside in the area of Afghanistan they now control. They have stripped away the dignity of the Afghani people, without conscience.

Osama bin Laden appears to believe that by expecting men to live their lives according to his version of the Holy Quran, he will be victorious against his enemies. He keeps his followers busy reading his version of what Mohammed is supposed to have condoned.

Over and over they read it until they must have it memorized. They read it so many times that at a certain point they are no longer able to think for themselves. In a sense they become brainwashed.

Osama bin Laden says he wants to destroy Israel and bring down the United States. However, it would appear that his real goal is world domination.

It is reported that he has said his father made him promise, when he was a still a boy, that he would fight against Israel to help their Palestinian brothers. However, in his mission to fulfill his fathers dream it appears that he has taken a direction that would pit the Islamic world against all the remaining people of the world.

What this sounds like is a religious war in which bin Laden expects God to help him succeed against the remaining world population that is not Islamic. A war in which he is expecting to be the leader, to come against the rest of the world under the worst possible circumstances.

This sounds like a megalomaniac at work. It sounds like he is filled with visions of grandeur, and truly believes it when the people who stand with him call him the prince.

However, the day the World Trade Center was destroyed we stepped into a new and exciting circle of expansion. While it is true that it was a terrible tragedy that so many died, it is also true that they have left us all a wonderful legacy.

We have seen our mortality and we have come to understand, in the moment of the collapse of those buildings, what are really the most important things to us: our God, our mates, our children, our parents, our siblings and other relatives and our friends and neighbors.

Suddenly people found themselves doing and saying the things that they felt in their hearts. Suddenly it became a manly thing to cry because something so horrible had happened to someone in our country.

It wasn't a crime against a few thousand people, it was a crime against an entire nation. A nation that is comprised of nearly all the countries of the world.

This crime hit middle America and we felt it in our hearts and our guts. Suddenly we understood what John F. Kennedy meant when he said "ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

We suddenly understood how important God is in our lives. We suddenly understood how important our families are to us. Many of us also came to realize how important our connection to each other is as well.

Men and women opened their hearts to each other, all over this country. That is something that no insanity, no amount of fear and no megalomaniac can come against. Because when we open our hearts we are filled with love for one another, and love overcomes all adversity.

So long as we keep our hearts open we will survive. We will overcome the Osama bin Ladens of the world. We will all stand together hand in hand whether we be black, white, red, brown or yellow. We will stand together hand in hand whether we be gay, straight, Christian, Islamic, Buddhist, Catholic, Agnostic or Atheist. We will stand together hand in hand whether we be men, women, children, young, old, skinny, fat, beautiful, ugly, tall, short, funny or serious.

Whether we are bankers, soldiers, firefighters, police officers, steel workers, bookkeepers, veterinarians, doctors, nurses, handicapped, wealthy, poor or all points in between, we will stand together, so long as we keep our hearts open. When your heart is open and you are standing in love with others, you are standing in the heart of God as well.

If we all stand together as Americans regardless of our religion, skin color, race, gender or profession, we become a force that cannot be penetrated. If we care about each other, regardless of past prejudices, we care about ourselves as well.

Because when we hurt another person, deep inside where we can't see we really hurt ourselves the most. When we care about each other, we are doing the greatest thing to combat terrorism. We are sticking together and refusing to panic.

Those of us who have suffered and seen the unthinkable need to talk about it and share our pain. Those of us who did not see it need to listen to those who did.

We need to have compassion for one another. We need to realize that we are really one big family. We need to stop persecuting others and celebrate our differences.
 

God is showing us, if we will listen and look, that we can no longer hide. There is no where to hide, except in Him. He is our refuge and our light. We have to come to the understanding that in helping each other we are doing God's work. This has nothing to do with religion and everything to do with the music of the heart. When you do God's work your heart sings.

We must stop and realize that we are all a family, whether we like it or not. We must realize that in helping someone else we are being God's messenger. He needs us to do His work and He needs us to recognize that His children are our family as well.

This does not mean that we bury our heads in the sand and wait for the world to go by. It means that we need to expect the very best from all people. If they choose not to give the very best, then that is up to them.

Those who refuse to stand in the light are no longer going to be able to hide. They are being exposed and being shown to be the negative beings they really are.

It shows in their eyes. There's no light there. It's as if no light can get in and they don't want any light to get in.

You can hear it in their voice as well. Often there is a constant impatience with everything and everyone and they radiate an energy that seems to be saying "stay away, I don't want anyone near me."

They are out for themselves and don't care about anyone else. They rarely do anything for anyone including their own family, unless there is something in it for them.

Sometimes they carry on something for a family member and become fanatical about it. Their attitude is often that nobody helped them so why should they help anyone else. They believe in the motto "do unto others before they have the chance to do unto you."

Sometimes they seem to be good people on the outside, but on the inside they are seething with anger and rage. They are often buried in self pity and no matter what you do for them it may never be enough.

They often judge everything and everyone. If someone does something nice for them they say they're stupid and call them a fool. Often they have only contempt for kindness and generosity of the heart. They're the old Scrooges of the world, stingy, mean and nasty.

On the other hand, those who stand in the light of God, regardless of their race, color, religion, gender or age are standing out like a beacon in the night. It is easy to recognize them now, because you can see it in their eyes, hear it in their voice and feel it in the energy they radiate from themselves.

They're the ones who are helping others, without expecting anything in return. They're the ones who are helping others even when others take advantage of them. They just make a mental note that certain ones are not needing help as much as others, without judgment of any kind.

They're the angels of God in human bodies that bring peace and love to others, everywhere they go. They're the ones who give, even when they have nothing to give except a smile and a kind word. They're the ones who are helping God save the world by keeping their hearts open.

They're the ones you pass on the street every day and hardly notice. They're the ones who don't need any fanfare because they get that from God.

They're the ones who are ready to give any hour of the day or night. They're the ones who help make the world a better place for us all to live in. Because of them, we will survive.

Leah Solara
Minister, Reiki Master Teacher, Hypnotherapist, Soul Awakener, Dream Interpreter,
Psychic and Former Host of KXLY Radio's "Universal Heart Beat"

Leah has done spiritual counseling and readings with clients for more than twenty years. She is adept at interpreting dreams, often giving detailed information about their true meaning. In addition Leah encourages her clients to learn to interpret their dreams for themselves.

She teaches her clients and students that they are here for a higher purpose, and that they have all the answers they are looking for inside themselves. If the student is having problems getting in touch with those answers she teaches them how to tune in to their own spiritual connection with their Higher Power, whatever they perceive that to be. Some consider their Higher Power to be God, but that is their individual choice to make that distinction.

She has found that one of the things some of her students feel is total separation from that Higher Power. With the many skills she has at her fingertips, she is able to help them learn to tune into that Higher Power and reconnect. Then they are able to get their own answers once again or sometimes for the first time.

Leah wants all people to know that they are part of a great picture God is putting together here on earth. Everyone is important. If even one person is missing from the picture, it will be incomplete.