Ayoon Wa Azan (Ignoring the real reason behind terrorism)

Terrorism is terrorism, whether perpetrated by the Israeli occupation army, or a Muslim extremist from the deviant faction, who knows not his true religion. During the Boston Marathon on April 15, two pressure cookers rigged with explosives detonated near the finish line, killing 3 people and injuring 284 others. It soon turned out that the terror attack was orchestrated by two Chechen brothers, Dzokhar and Tamrlan Tsarnaev. The first was injured in a police chase, and the second was killed. On May 22, two terrorists of Nigerian origin, Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale, rammed a British soldier with their car in a London neighborhood, and then attacked him with machetes and killed him. The two terrorists were wounded by the police, and they are now facing trial. What happened in Boston then London is heinous terrorism that I absolutely condemn. There are no excuses and no justifications, and Islam is innocent of these acts even if a Chechen or a Nigerian claims otherwise. These acts are in the same category as the terror attacks of al-Qaeda and the groups affiliated with it, which kill innocent people and hurt Islam and the Muslims. The international media’s coverage of the terror attacks in the United States and Britain was overwhelming, but as a reader of US and British newspaper, as well as the Arabic press, I can say, with as much objectivity as possible, that I found no reference whatsoever in the news stories and commentaries to the real reason behind the spread of this mad and devastating terrorism. British PM David Cameron vowed that his government would ‘drain the swamp’ where radical Muslim extremists are hiding, promoting their ideas, and poisoning the minds of young Muslims. This is certainly needed, and must be endorsed by Muslims before others. But the British premier and officials in his government, and also the US officials, fail to mention why the extremist preachers succeed in turning young Muslims to terrorism in the first place. No disease can be cured if its real causes are not treated. I stop here to introduce some background. I will not go back to Sykes-Picot and the Balfour Declaration, or to how Christian Europe massacred six million Jews and then sent the survivors of the Nazi Holocaust to occupy Palestine. I go past all this to say that, as someone who is a contemporary of the Palestinian cause ever since I was politically aware, and as someone who knows all its leaders from the various factions, the cause had not known a single suicide bomber since the Nakba 65 years ago, and throughout the seventies. Back in those days, there was no Hamas, Islamic Jihad, or Hezbollah. But the war of 1967, then the 1973 war and the invasion of Lebanon, and the absence of any hope in a peaceful solution facilitated the task for extremists who cited US-led Western support for the criminal state named Israel. After the terror attacks of 9/11, the United Stated waged abortive wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, and on terror, which meant that the advocates of terror could now clearly point fingers at the party that killed one million Arabs and Muslims, and continues to kill more. Terror is not the solution, but is a crime against humanity. However, it has become possible and widespread because of the calamities visited on Muslims in every country, in the era of neo-imperialism. If the West wants to defeat terrorism, which has increased progressively in the last two decades, then it must treat the underlying disease, namely, Western foreign policy which has cooperated with every tyrant, backed Israel, occupied Iraq for oil- and Israel-related reasons, and continues to meddle in every Arab or Muslim country at the expense of its people. The case in point, far from Palestine, Iraq, and elsewhere, is Libya: There, the West collaborated with Muammar Gaddafi, a half-mad dictator, in return for oil contracts. When Gaddafi’s people rose against him, the West backed the rebels on the condition of preserving the oil contracts. But Libya itself was left to face its fate on its own after that, and is now suffering from rampant internal terror which it is exporting to neighboring countries. Once again, terrorism will not be defeated if Western policies towards the Arabs and Muslims do not change. Indeed, denying that the problem exists will not solve it and will only aggravate it, as is happening now. In the end, we will all pay the price, perhaps in the form of terror attacks using WMDs. No one in the West today speaks about the underlying causes of terrorism. They mention everything else and ignore those, as though terrorism will disappear on its own accord in the swamp mentioned by David Cameron. Well, this will not happen. He who shall live shall see. The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent or reflect the editorial policy of Arabstoday.