The Single Most Important Reason for Terrorism in the Arab World
Since September 2001 attack on the US, or after every similar attack by “Islamists” in London, Madrid, Paris and other places in the world, the same question comes back again and again: Why they hate us? Why their religion is so violent? Why they are ready to die and give up their lives????
Of course, Media tries to answer these questions by asking politics, academics, historians or religion experts, among others. Thus, we usually hear multiple answers and theories but not very convincing.
Personally, I am not one of those experts. I am just a person who happens to be born in the Arab world, to be a Muslim and to have the chance to live in Europe and to discover the civilizations of a lot of nations. Nevertheless, I never found any of their explanations close to the truth neither conclusive. Thus, I will try in this article to explain what I believe to be the most important reason for the spreading of terrorism in and from the Arab World.
Before giving my personal analysis, I would like to emphasize on the following two important points:
- Although I strongly believe the reason I will provide is the single most important one, I fully admit that it is not the only one. I believe that there are several and interconnected causes.
- Even if we succeed to identify all the reasons, there is never any justification for a terror attack on innocent civilian people.
After this introduction, I hope you are ready to read this most important single reason: The Feeling of Injustice among People in the Arab World.
In fact, when you talk with Arab people from Egypt, Syria, Morocco or any of the 22 Arabic countries, this feeling of injustice comes again and again. To better understand this feeling and how it can transform a normal person to a terrifying terrorist in Al Qaida or ISIS organization, we need to distinguish between two types of injustice perceived by Arab people.
The first is related to the internal situation in each of the Arabic countries. This is characterized by a lack of freedom and real democracy as most of the Arab countries are ruled by a sort of dictatorship regime since independence in the middle of the last century. Consequently, most Arab countries suffer from corruption, underdeveloped infrastructure and high unemployment rate.
This is translated into a huge feeling of frustration, especially among the young generation. They see that their aspiration for a decent life, from both material and spiritual perspective, is unachievable in their home countries. This feeling of injustice is exacerbated when seeing the minority close to the ruling regime enjoying a high quality of life in complete contradiction with the majority of their people. As a peaceful democratic opposition is not possible (it is always faced with a brutal response from the ruling regime), some young Arabic generations are unfortunately tempted by radical extremist movements. For others, as I personally did, they immigrate for a better opportunity.
The second source of injustice feeling among Arab people is the behavior of Occidental countries toward the Arab world. In fact, it is a huge source of frustration for Arabic people to see the grand democratic countries such as US, France and UK supporting dictatorship regimes in the Arab world in order to guarantee short term interests such as petrol supply or arms contracts. They behave without any consideration of the suffering of people living under these dictatorship regimes. This partially explains why some extreme movements born in an Arabic country attack western countries far away from their base home.
To worsen this injustice feeling, the position of major Occidental countries, especially the US, on the Israel-Palestine conflict is a huge source of frustration. The Palestinian suffering is in the heart of each Arab so the blind support to the occupation of Palestine by the Israeli army for the last fifty years is just unacceptable for all Arabic people, regardless of their religion. Everyone knows that Palestinians did not participate in the terrible genocide of Jewish people in Europe during the Second World War. Thus, why to ask Palestinians to pay the price!
A lot of opinion leaders in the Occidental world promoted that Terrorism in the Arab world is the result of Islam religion. I do not want to go into a theological discussion about the peaceful characteristics of Islam. I can just draw your attention to the fact that the biggest Muslim country in the world is Indonesia which is not an Arabic country. It enjoys a democratic peaceful life, similar to what we can see in most Occidental democratic countries, as its people do not live under the frustrating pressure of injustice feeling of Arab World.
Several international NGOs work to reduce poverty and improve education in the Arab World, especially for women. This is a very useful and appreciated effort but I do not believe that it can eradicate terrorism, as it is not treating the root cause of injustice feeling. In fact, this deep feeling of injustice is a fertile medium for the growth of extreme ideas and behaviors.
In conclusion, if occidental politics would like to efficiently eradicate the root source of terrorism in the Arab World, it is the time to finally address the two most important factors explained above. This will not necessarily require allocating huge military or intelligent resources but it will mandatory need changing the manner they look to Arabic countries and their people.
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