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SPEAKING
FREELY
Blaming
the mosques
By Ramzy Baroud
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times Online
feature that allows guest writers to have their
say. Please click here
if you are interested in
contributing.
The deadly terror attacks in Egypt's Sharm
el-Sheik Red Sea resort in July and the earlier
October 2004 bombings at two other Red Sea resorts
seem to have disrupted the consistency of the
rationale that links the current terrorism upsurge
in the Middle East to the US war effort in Iraq.
The Christian Science Monitor newspaper
attempted to neatly package the ongoing debate in
the West on the root causes of political and
ideological terrorism within two primary schools
of thought ("Why Jihadists Target the West", July
25). One school links terror directly to the war
on Iraq, another believes that terror groups are
ideologically, rather than politically motivated,
thus reinforcing the "clash of civilizations"
argument.
The civilization argument, as
dissected by the Monitor, contends that the Sharm
el-Sheik terror - directed at Westerners
regardless of the role played by their governments
to aid the Iraq war effort - is a perfect case in
point. "The Mecca for Westernized Egyptian and
European tourists was targeted for the sin of
being a beachhead of a globalized, tolerant
culture in Arab Muslim territory," it maintained.
In Egypt itself, the debate is taking on
another distinctive, yet equally flawed approach.
The Associated Press, for example, reported that
some Egyptians are now openly examining the link
between culture and extremism, highlighting the
assertion that mosques and schools
(madrassas) should be blamed for promoting
Islamic extremism. The Egyptian debate, while
unique in some ways to that country, is a
recreation of the ongoing and dubious intellectual
scuffle over the role of the madrassas in
Pakistan in molding and forging terrorists from an
early age.
Not only do these arguments
fail to candidly inspect a variety of other
factors that might have contributed to the spread
of terrorism, but they imprudently encourage
measures that will most probably give terrorists
more fuel to carry on with their mission of
violence, cajoling additional recruits and
resources.
Cultural and religious
intolerance is certainly not unique to the Middle
East, nor is terrorism itself. If madrassas
supposedly elucidate the motives behind the
militancy of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, what will
one make of terrorism in India, Nepal, Sri Lanka,
Spain (Basque separatism prior to the train
bombing), and Northern Ireland? It is not as if
the list ends there. To the contrary, it barely
begins. The truth is that Middle East terrorism
became a globalized phenomenon after many regions
around the world - that are neither Arab nor
Muslim - experienced their share of deadly terror.
It goes without saying that the rise of al-Qaeda
and its support networks worldwide have not in any
way contributed to the decline of terrorism
elsewhere. In fact, many innocent people continue
to fall victim to terrorism in many other regions
and in large numbers. The quandary is that the
victims are often not Westerners, thus their
plight is either entirely neglected or hastily
stated by the world media and then quickly
forgotten.
Using the same logic, if the
root cause of terrorism is indeed cultural and
religious intolerance - advocated in some Islamic
schools and mosques - then why aren't young
American neo-conservatives and fundamentalist
evangelicals blowing themselves up in crowded
Libyan or Sudanese streets? Or why are suicide
bombings a prevalent practice employed by
Palestinians against Israelis, and not the other
way around?
While unofficial terrorism -
as opposed to official, state-sponsored terror -
can inflict untold hurt, it is often a frantic
retort to political, cultural, religious,
ideological and even physical oppression and
violence. Unprovoked terror, at least in much of
the Middle East, if considered objectively is
unheard of. Thus, violence in most instances
trails behind often greater acts of violence; the
Iraqi insurgent (a terrorist according to the
prevailing Western media interpretation and a
resistance fighter as considered by many Arabs)
was, in some ironic way, an American discovery:
without a violent invasion and occupation, Iraqis
would have had no reason to fight back. By the
same token, without an Israeli occupation of
Palestinian land and the subsequent violence
wrought upon the Palestinians, Palestinians would
have had no particular interest in blowing
themselves up.
If Islamic religious
extremism truly produced terror in a complete
vacuum, it would make little sense for an Iraqi
woman to be the first suicide bomber following the
invasion in March 2003, considering that most
extremists forbid women from taking part in
physical jihad. It would be equally baffling if
one recalls that communist Palestinian
revolutionaries are the ones who indeed
spearheaded Palestinian terrorism in the 1970s,
decades before Hamas was even conceptualized.
Needless to say, a Jewish settler need not
blow himself up, nor does a neo-con enthusiast,
for they simply don't have to, as their religious
and cultural ideals of intolerance are carried out
on a much greater scale through the official
policies and practices of their respective
governments. Hence, the war in Iraq, which has
killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians, is
arguably by far the greatest act of terrorism
experienced in many years.
As for the case
of Egypt, veteran Egyptian journalist, Ayman
El-Amir, writing for Al-Ahram Weekly articulated
it best: Terrorism (as a consequence of political
ostracism, not religious fanaticism) is fomented
"not in the mosque or the madrassas but in
solitary confinement cells, torture chambers, and
the environment of fear wielded by dictatorial
regimes as instruments of legitimate governments."
It's here where any genuine inquiry into
the root causes of terrorism should begin, and
most likely, conclude.
Ramzy
Baroud, a veteran Arab American journalist,
teaches mass communication at Curtin University of
Technology. He is the author of the forthcoming
book, Writings on the Second Palestinian
Uprising (Pluto Press, London.)
(Copyright 2005 Ramzy
Baroud)
Speaking
Freely is an Asia Times Online feature that allows
guest writers to have their say. Please click here
if you are interested in
contributing. |
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