Last week I had an opinion piece published in the Citizen newspaper. It was published in response to an antagonistic Media Review Network article that the Citizen published the previous week. It just goes to show that anyone can get opinion pieces published. You just have to voice your complaints when you see a cause for concern, write a response, and convince the newspaper to print it.
The article I responded to absolved Islam from any terror inciting problems and laid the usual blame at the feet of the West. It contained this gem...
| The horrors of Bosnia and Kosovo were committed by a democratically elected Serbian government. The largest democracy India has 750000 troops occupying butchering and raping Kashmir And Israel falsely touted as a democracy invades, occupies, violates, maims, destroys and brutalises the land, homes and lives of the Palestinians with impunity. These are not the values that any Muslim aspires to. The most important political value for the West is freedom. |
Yes, yes MRN, we've heard it all before. Here was my response which was printed last week:
The aftermath of every terror attack is becoming increasingly predictable. After worldwide condemnations of the brutal violence , an assortment of Muslim spokespersons are given alternate platforms which they use to deplore the attacks, assuring us that Islam is merely an innocent bystander in today's terrorism. These condemnations almost always end with the same "but" where , blame is placed on the "Anglo American led invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and its unflinching support of Israel's illegal occupation of Palestine." Finally, democracy is described as a failed social order which inevitably leads to a system where elected tyrants look to control and humiliate nations weaker than theirs.
That so many people who should know better so willingly accept this view stems in the main from an ignorance so profound that it seems deliberate.
We should hardly need reminding that the hideous events of 9/11 preceded the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The attacks were perpetrated not by Palestinians but by global Jihadists who view every conflict as part of the Western encroachment on the Muslim ummah (worldwide community of believers). Australian PM John Howard, facing staunch criticism for his resolute support of Blair and Bush following the London attacks, reminded us that the indiscriminate murder of 88 Australians in Bali occurred before the operation in Iraq. Were the invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan the reasons for the 1986 and 1995 bombings in Paris? The objective facts show that nations from all five continents have been the target of terror attacks long before Iraq and Afghanistan. Nations like Egypt and Turkey have suffered multiple attacks despite playing no substantive role in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Israel has become the "whipping boy" blamed for the most vicious and indiscriminate of attacks. The 'illegal occupation", we are supposed to believe, is the dominant injustice that forces impoverished, desperate, and frustrated people around the world to massacre and maim innocent civilians. The only problem is that the hatred and ire for Israel existed before Israel was forced, in a defensive war, to occupy the West Bank and the Gaza strip. The lack of acceptance of Israel in the Middle East is reflected by the wars of 1947, 1956, and 1967 . These events preceded occupation.
The fears of having democracy imposed upon the people in the Arab world are particularly interesting and usually expressed by outside supporters of radical regimes. A recent poll conducted by Jerusalem Media and Communication Centre contradicted these superficial analyses. The poll found that 75% of Palestinians want to take part in a democratic process to elect members to the Palestinian Legislative Council. Furthermore, regarding the next elections, Palestinians considered awareness of democracy to be either very important or important by a majority of 89%. Eight million Iraqis went to the polls, in spite of the terrible odds against them, in order to express their affirmation of democracy.
It is clear that religion has more to do with today's terror wave than the three model answers , (Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine) so glibly provided. (Were this the case, then why have the impoverished, frustrated and desperate Zimbabweans not turned to terror in the face of Mugabe's brutality?) Al Qaeda operatives in Iraq have frequently referred to a particular passage from the Koran before beheading their victims: "Whoever kills a human being, except as punishment for murder or other villainy in the land, shall be regarded as having killed all mankind."
The targeting of civilians in Iraq, Israel, London, New York, Turkey, Egypt, Bali, or any other place is absolutely unjustified and we should have the courage to stand up and say exactly that. The root cause of the terrorist wave had nothing to do with Iraq, Afghanistan or Israel; it emanated instead from the same policy that enriched the hatred , and from fatwas directed at Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasreen - the radicalisation of young, mostly Westernised Muslims through a distorted perversion of Islam, a revision of historical political events, glorification of previous suicide bombers, and a dehumanising of the civilian victims of these criminal acts.
A manual distributed to apprentice Jihadists in Al Qaeda training camps states the rationale for their Jihad:
The principal mission of our military organisation is to overthrow the Godless regimes and replace them all with an Islamic regime.
The destruction of Western civilisation sits at the core of the Jihadist agenda. This makes a mockery of the well-intentioned attempts to ascribe rational economic and political causes to the reasons behind terrorism. Western civilisation is blamed not for what it does, but for what it is. The idea of finding a "political solution" to the problem of Islamic terrorism is based on the false assumption that the Jihadists want to live alongside secular westernised society in an environment of tolerance and compromise. The time has come to stop the transparent charade.
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