Muslims and terror

By Salama A Salama

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Those who abducted and murdered the Egyptian ambassador in Baghdad belong to the same network of groups, and embrace the same pernicious ideas, as those who bombed London, where dozens, including Muslims, were killed in cold blood.

Egyptian reaction to the killing of the ambassador was one of outrage against the Iraqi resistance, especially the Al-Zarqawi group that has succeeded in giving Islam and the resistance an infamous name. In London and Europe, Islam and Muslims are once again a target for hate. Hours after the London bombs went off, mosques were attacked and dozens of Muslims detained. Tony Blair, the UK prime minister, tried to keep the fury from turning into unbridled persecution of Europe's three million Muslims. He urged the public not to confuse Islam with the deranged ideas of militant extremists.

But in moments of catastrophe and death, calming words may be lost. The dangers hemming in Europe's Muslims may not stop at detention, suspicion and travel constraints. As Thomas Friedman has pointed out, every Muslim is now guilty until proven innocent. Friedman is advising the Muslim world to take measures to prevent and denounce terror. The West is unlikely to tolerate a situation where its cities, streets and open society are held hostage. The West does not want to end up living in fear behind closed doors.

Most people in the West are aware that Islam and terror are incompatible, as the London chief of police made clear. Westerners know that Al-Qaeda's view of Islam is twisted and sick. But that does not solve anything. It was the double standards of the West that created an environment where psychopaths thrive and ill minds scream murder and get a following. In the West, people were horrified by the London bombings. What they should remember is that terror thrives when US planes kill dozens of innocents in Tikrit, Falluja, and Karbala; when Israeli planes bombard Palestinian camps and villages; and when Guantanamo inmates turn into martyrs. People seem to have forgotten how Bush and Blair went to war in Iraq on false pretences.

Terror in the name of Islam is being committed not only in London, Madrid and New York, but also in Egypt, Morocco and Saudi Arabia. Terror is giving a bad name to otherwise legitimate resistance in Iraq and Palestine. Such terror is our own problem first and foremost. It is not up to the West to correct erroneous Islamic concepts or put back reason into devious Muslim minds. This is something we should do ourselves.

Muslim scholars who are hired by governments to speak for Islam have failed to do their job. They have failed to stop the horror of militants masquerading as the pious, or of murder disguised as heroism. Once Islamic institutions became part of the state apparatus, people stopped listening to clerics, or taking seriously their denunciation of terror. Each time the religious institution issues custom-made edicts for political purposes, it loses credibility. State-sponsored clerics have been staunch opponents of reform, and thus incapable of offering leadership.

We have a problem on two fronts. Externally, we are being pushed by those who believe in hegemony, bias, and double standards. Internally, we are being stifled by repression and lack of reform. Our defeat on those two fronts is giving rise to more violence. It is making the young particularly vulnerable to twisted ideas. Tony Blair is apparently aware that such a situation cannot be addressed through security measures alone. Our state-sponsored clerics are not of much help either. This is the kind of situation that can only be addressed through a comprehensiv e programme for internal and external reform.