Terrorism in context

By Awatef Abdel-Rahman

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There are two general approaches to understanding terrorism: interpreting historical, political, social and cultural factors or unveiling the psychological makeup and religious fanaticism of terrorists themselves. While the Arab and Islamic world tends towards the former, its Western counterpart clings tenaciously to the latter. Whereas one emphasises causes sometimes to the degree of exculpating terrorists, the other reads terrorism as a criminal pathology virtually bereft of socio-political context.

Both approaches fail to grasp present realities. Placing terrorism in context of a historical crisis between the West and Arab and Islamic peoples, the causal approach is on the whole correct but simplistic. Arabs and Muslims in the past frequently sought recourse to other forms of protest against Western hegemony: why, therefore, has terrorism risen to the fore today?

The most salient reasons are twofold: first, the total dependency in which the West holds Arab and Islamic governments; second, the West's growing monopoly over modern technology, international monetary organisation and mammoth transnational conglomerates.

There is a gulf between Arab and Islamic peoples and their governments, propped up by Western powers and internal security apparatuses, and between the Arab and Islamic world and the West characterised by gross economic disparity, encouraging the rise of a rigidly fundamentalist mindset, hostile to all but its own selective interpretations of Islamic scriptures.

To offset this increasingly dire situation what is needed is an Arab-Arab dialogue aimed at regaining the political-moral initiative by championing universalist and humanitarian values in the Arab and Islamic civilisation. Simultaneously, an Arab-Western dialogue must be set in motion with the aim of restructuring this relationship on rational and equitable bases.

This week's Soapbox speaker is professor of mass communication at Cairo University.