Middle-class militancy

Arabs who support Al-Qaeda, according to a recent poll, are educated and apparently well off. This slant towards irrationality must be addressed, writes Emad Gad*

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The Al-Jazeera website recently posted a question and asked readers to respond to gauge Arab public opinion as represented by visitors to the site. The question was: "Do you support Al-Qaeda's threats to attack Europeans?" The poll was conducted from 29 July to 1 August, and 55,077 site visitors responded to the question. In the final count, 59.2 per cent of respondents did not support such threats while 40.8 per cent did support them. Thus, although the majority does not support Al-Qaeda attacks on Europeans, the minority that does support it is not negligible by any means. More than 40 per cent, or four out of every 10 respondents, support Al-Qaeda's threat to attack Europeans. This is a high enough number to give pause and require serious analysis.

We must reflect on these results, particularly since respondents presumably belong to the educated classes and are supposed to have a fair degree of awareness. They use advanced communications technology and are comfortable with surfing the web. In other words, they are not illiterate.

It must be said at the outset that the results can be partially explained by the feeling among Arabs that they have been treated unjustly by the international order. Arabs are keenly aware of the mark of American hegemony in the region, seen all over the Arab world, whether in the shape of direct military occupation, as is the case in Iraq, direct support of occupation, as in Palestinian territories, or unceasing pressure exercised on Arab regimes. Clearly, these pressures, in addition to a foolish, arrogant use of force by US neo-conservatives, have increased the sense among the Arab public that the West is intentionally targeting the Arab world.

A discussion of these results and their significance must start with an unqualified rejection of violence and all forms of terrorism directed at civilians, particularly those who are geographically and ideologically distant from the points of conflict in the region. Moreover, a discussion of the poll should not ignore the fact that Al- Qaeda is a terrorist organisation that has committed terrorist acts all over the world, including in the Arab world.

In the first place, it must be noted that a high degree of support was evidenced even though the question explicitly asked about Al-Qaeda's threats to Europeans in general, not, for example, threats to governments or officials who supported the war on Iraq, or those who support the continuing Israeli onslaught on the Palestinian people.

Clearly, those who answered the question in the affirmative hold an anti-European bias that touches on Europe as a culture, civilisation and people. This is a serious threat to the future of the Arab community and the image of Arabs in global public opinion, and we can expect such sentiments as revealed by the results to have an impact on the stance of other nations on Arab issues brought up for a vote in international forums.

Certainly anti-Arab organisations will attempt to disseminate the results as widely as possible within Europe, particularly among those nations that have given moral and material support to Arab causes for real humanitarian reasons.

Secondly, it must be noted that the high percentage of those supporting attacks on Europeans comes at a time when Europeans in general, both the public and officials, are taking positive stances towards Arab causes. For example, in a poll conducted by the European Commission asking Europeans about the nation they considered to be the greatest threat to world peace, close to 60 per cent of Europeans named Israel. The results created uproar among Israeli officials, the Israeli media and Zionist organisations, many of which accused Europe of anti-Semitism.

In addition, European officials have generally held more balanced views towards Arab issues, on many occasions more balanced than Arab governments themselves. Such was the case with the stance Germany, France and Belgium took on the war on Iraq. All the nations of the European Union voted for the resolution in the UN General Assembly demanding that the International Court of Justice ruling on Israel's separation wall in the occupied West Bank be implemented.

We could go on in detail about the positive stances taken by Europeans, both governments and people, on Arab issues, but first we must stop to consider that more than 40 per cent of respondents in the Al- Jazeera poll support attacks by Al-Qaeda on Europeans. This fact must be treated with the utmost seriousness, particularly since it comes as individuals are being beheaded amidst cries of "God is great" and "There is no God but God." All of this indicates a grave defect in the way of thinking, a disorder that has produced a one-sided mentality filled with contradictions and a mindset that sees absolute good in the self and absolute evil in the other. This mentality is not based on logical, objective foundations, but dictates irrational behaviour, the effects of which go to the very heart of culture and civilisation.

Certainly, several factors have accumulated over a long period of time, the responsibility for which lie both at home and abroad. At home, academic curricula and the media have fed and continue to feed irrational ways of thinking that lead to close- mindedness and hostility to an absolutely evil other opposed to the good self. Pressures, interference and attacks from abroad have only increased this hostility towards the other, and thus the spiral continues. The time has come to break this cycle by starting with ourselves and correcting our own views. We must reform our own educational system and the media while visualising a strategy for a national renaissance that would involve a comprehensive development of our educational, political and economic systems and foster balanced interactions with the outside world. We must confront threats to the self and national aspirations through real action, leaving aside traditional mentalities mired in conspiracy theories.

There are many aspects of thought in the Arab world that must be re-assessed and revised in order to build a strong basis for a culture of tolerance and co-existence, and instil the idea of civilisational dialogue and co-dependence as an alternative to the current clash of civilisations.

The Al-Jazeera poll is evidence of the spread of a militant culture among many parts of the educated Arab public. It is time to face this and be on our guard.

* The writer is director of Arabs Against Discrimination, a Cairo-based NGO.