Felix sends these excellent articles, stating they are a 'must read'. Former dean of the shari'a and law faculty at Qatar University Dr Al-Ansari's voice of reason would be well placed on any of our blogs relating to the Middle East, since terrorism is a transnational problem. Indeed, if we had a blog about that ill-defined entity called 'The West', I should post this on there too. All too many in the West still believe that we are somehow to blame for the sickness that ails the Muslim extremist - or that a few tweaks in foreign policy would be enough to address the problem. Click here to read the entire piece.
Terrorism - The Outcome of a Culture of Hatred
In an article titled "How to Make Our Young People Love Life" in the Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyassa, Dr. Al-Ansari stated that it is the culture of hatred and extremism in the Arab countries that causes terrorism:
"Terrorism is the fruit of hatred - hatred of life, hatred of civilization and the [modern] era, hatred of society and state, hatred of living people. The young people who have become tools of murder and human bombs are the sons of the culture of hatred, and the outcome of a fanatical culture and extremist ideology that sees life, its pleasures, and its beauty as unimportant. Ultimately the political, economic, social, and religious motives that push [the young people] to blow themselves up lie in a single main cause - and that is the culture of hatred.
"These young people, at the age of flowering, have become the enemies of their society, avenging, hating, and exploding. They are our terrorist sons, raised in our bosoms, suckled by our culture, taught in our schools, and taught religious law from our religious pulpits and by the fatwas of our clerics.
"What, then, has made them prefer death to life? I have no answer except the fact that we have not managed to make them love life. We have taught them to die for the sake of Allah, but we have not taught them to love, to build, to create, and to help society for the sake of Allah. We have taught them that nationalism [means] attacking America and opposing imperialism, but we have not taught them that nationalism is love, loyalty, and belonging to the homeland...
"How can this miserable creature called the Arab and Muslim individual not turn to extremism, when he is surrounded by an overall atmosphere of extremism, bound by the shackles of repression and prohibitions, and girded by the ideas of intimidation and terrorization, and of almost endless torment? These accompany this creature from birth to death, beginning with dire warnings about the torments of the grave and enemy plots lying in wait for Islam and the Muslims, [as well as] the long list of prohibitions that has made blessed life - the gift of the Creator - into a prison of pain, from which the individual seeks to escape to Paradise and to the lovely maidens in it.
"As if all this were not enough, we even employ religious police to follow the people, to restrict their freedoms, to spy on them, and to interfere in their personal affairs. So how can there not be widespread phenomena of tension and worry in the souls [of the people]?...
"Go to hear a Friday sermon, and you will find a preacher who is enraged at the world, angry at civilization, spreading the poison of hatred and enmity. Then you will leave [the mosque] tense and angry!...
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Well this states the obvious really, without addressing the reasons for the culture of hate. For instance, some radicalisation of Gaza was a reaction to the failure of the West to respond positively (as it had indicated it would respond) to the creation of a Government of National Unity. As so often, the peaceful option proved ineffective.
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