Islamic Terrorism and the Tangential Response of the West: The Other Side of the Coin

By Al-amine Mohammed Abba Seid

A lot has been done and said on so called War On Terror, and the relation between the West and the Muslim world, principally from Western perspective. However, very few is known about Muslim perspectives-the perspective of the people at the receiving end. Th e Book Islamic Terrorism and the Tangential Response of the West, will give the reader a unique opportunity to learn about the other side of the coinfrom Muslim perspectives:

Why Terrorism is not a monopoly of Islam and Muslims.
Why? But not how? event like 9/11 happened.
What are the grievances of the Muslim world vis a vis the policies of the Western establishment.
What is the attitude of Islam towards Judaism and Christianity.
What Islam stands for as a religion and a comprehensive way of life.
What is the state of mind of a typical Muslim as citizen of this world.
How the War on Terror is used as a tool for Global Imperialism.
How the Western powers use fl imsy pretexts to re-edit the tragic era of colonialism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Nov 8, 2011
• ISBN: 9781467885676

Al-amine Mohammed Abba Seid

AL-AMINE MOHAMMED ABBA SEID was born in the Lake Chad. Had a colourful childhood before starting formal education in 1968. Sent to Qur’anic school in 1975, but defected in 1979 and resumed formal education. Taught theory and practice of translation at the University of Maiduguri. Works currently as translator into English, French and Arabic.

Book preview

© 2012 Al-Amine Mohammed Abba Seid. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 3/21/2012

ISBN: 978-1-4678-8566-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4678-8567-6 (e)

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1:

Terrorism

Chapter 2:

The Event of 9/11 as Trigger for War on Terror

Chapter 3:

The Travesty of Humanitarian Intervention

Chapter 4:

Efforts to Equate Islam with Terrorism

Chapter 5:

The War on Terror and Islamic Terrorism

Chapter 6:

The Anatomy of Islam

Chapter 7:

The Psychology of a Muslim

Chapter 8:

How Muslims Fared under Foreign Domination

Chapter 9:

The Mutability and Immutability of the World

Chapter 10:

The Fallacy of the Premises of Discourses in the West on Islamic Issues

Chapter 11:

Neglect of Issues Central to the Muslim World

Chapter 12:

Selective Application of Universal Principles

Chapter 13:

The Ploy of Weapons of Mass Destruction

Chapter 14:

Selective Application of International Laws:

The Weapon of Economic Embargo

Chapter 15:

Glorification of Persons Who Have Injured the Feelings of Muslims

Chapter 16:

The Western Claim of Impartiality on World Issues—The Bosnia Paradox

Chapter 17:

9/11 and Pandora’s Box

Chapter 18:

The Way Forward

Chapter 19:

President Barak Hussein Obama

Chapter 20:

Conclusion

REFERENCES

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ENDNOTES

INTRODUCTION

Fighting Islamic Terrorism is perhaps the most important post–Cold War challenge faced by the West. In terms of typology, Islamic Terrorism could in no way be considered the only form of terrorism currently perpetrated on Earth, but its specificity lies in its religious underpinning and the calibre of its target. It dares to lock horns with the Western establishment, which has in its midst the unique superpower, the victor of the two World Wars and the Cold War, the conqueror of the bastion of world Communism (the USSR), the victor of almost all wars it has fought, and the citadel of the world capitalism. Worse still, the challenge is not even from a classical superpower but from a group of disgruntled renegades from the third world.

To totally eradicate this plague, the West, led by the United States of America, declared a crusade, code-named the ‘war on terror’, which took its clear shape in the aftermath of the tragic events of 9/11, launched by President G. W. Bush, with its devastating effect on the Muslims world, and continued by President Obama, with all its ramifications. The adoption by Obama of the ‘war on terror’ in its original form, as legated by Bush, not only represents a clear departure from his election campaign slogan ‘Yes we can’, which in its essence is about ‘governing differently’—but is also in contradiction with his solemn commitment before the Muslim world in his speech at Cairo University, that he is going to set a new course for US–Muslim world relations. A lot of water has passed under the bridge of this war effort, many decisions of strategic significance were taken and executed, sovereign countries were invaded, atrocities and counter-atrocities were committed, crimes were committed in the name of spreading democracy, human rights were violated with impunity (and, subsequently, formalized and legalized), international laws were violated, personal privacies were violated, people were arrested and detained for several years without trial or charges, and funds were frozen, while others were seized on mere suspicion.

In short, the world changed dramatically. At certain stage of the campaign for the war the whole world was virtually put under a global state of emergency. The human tragedy that ensued was even more devastating. People once living in peace and security were forced to leave their homes by the millions: internally displaced within the borders of their countries or refugees in neighbouring counties, while the more unfortunate ones were killed en masse. Their only crime was being citizens of those countries on which this war was imposed.

However, most of the purposes for which this war was waged—at least the declared ones—are far from being achieved. The gritty reality is that the results so far do not in any way justify the size of the losses—human, moral, material, and image—to the West. It is legitimate to ponder, therefore, why there have been so many losses, human and material, in the so-called war on terror for such unconvincing results. Something must have gone wrong along the line, even though other common mortals are not convinced in the first place, by the rationale behind this very phase of the ‘war on terror’, which included invading sovereign countries.

Consequently, in the absence of a clear picture of the situation, and in the face of an inconclusive outcome of the war, it is quite legitimate to ask whether the war on terror was, in the first place, used as a ploy to implement a well-designed imperial project with a clear-cut roadmap to conquer harmless but rich non-Western counties.

In an enterprise of such magnitude, there must naturally be a different version of the story, particularly from those on the receiving end of all these actions. Public opinion, both in the West and elsewhere, has heard enough of the perspectives of the Western establishment on the war on terror, courtesy of a mammoth media panoply that was able to influence a large sector of international public opinion. However, the Western public was not given the opportunity to hear, or was even surreptitiously prevented from hearing, the other part of the story.

In this humble work I will attempt to present ‘the other side of the coin’, as the subtitle of this work indicates, in plain language, by analyzing the issue from its various angles, and understand why the efforts made so far, in the general framework of so-called ‘war on terror’, are a failure. Also, questions will be raised as to whether the war was in fact on terror. Is the term Islamic Terrorism proper? Is it fair to link terrorism to Islam and Muslims? I will also examine the adequacy of the approaches used in handling the question, all from a Muslim perspective, which is the missing or the deliberately tinted part of the whole story of the ongoing ‘war on terror’. This, in my opinion, will offer a rare opportunity to the members of the general public, particularly in the West, to have the two theses and perspectives at hand so they can make their own synthesis, away from all materials intended to play with their intelligence, produced by pro-establishment media.

I will also attempt to analyse the history of the relationship between Islam and the West, the attitude of each side toward the other; visit the history of terrorism and scrutinize the veracity of the attempts being made by some to link it to Islam, based on fundamentally flawed premises; discuss terms like Islamophobia and its twin term, anti-Western sentiments in order to explicate the nature of Islam as a religion and a comprehensive way of life, as claimed by Muslims; the mentality of Muslims and their attitude towards Judaism and Christianity being the predominant religions in the West, based on Qur’anic texts.

Similarly, the claim of the West that it is the victim of Islamic Terrorism in the face of various grievances of the Muslim world vis-à-vis the West against the background of the latter’s policies in the Muslim world and its handling of various fundamental issues of capital importance to Muslims will equally be discussed. Also, the West’s overzealousness in imposing sanctions against Muslims countries, for failure to comply with UN Security Council resolutions compared with its complaisance vis-à-vis non-Muslim countries, on the implementation of similar UN resolutions; its use of the pretext of enforcing implementation of the UN sanctions to aggress, invade, and destroy Muslim countries, will be discussed.

Chapter 1:

Terrorism

Terrorism is perhaps one of the most popular political terms used today. However, the demarcation of its semantic scope is problematic. The Oxford Dictionary defines terrorism as the use of violent action in order to achieve political aims or to force a government to act. According to this definition, the action of the Kyrgyz people in April 2010, which resulted in the ousting of President Karimbec, or that of the Red Shirt Movement in May 2010 in Thailand, that of the Tunisian people in December 2010, the repetition of this popular movement in Egypt in January 2011 leading to the ousting of both presidents, and any other similar student or labour movements are considered acts of terrorism. Terrorism, according to the definition of the Convention of the Organization of the Islamic Cooperation (OIC) on Combating International Terrorism, is any act of violence or threat thereof notwithstanding its motives or intentions perpetrated to carry out an individual or collective criminal plan with the aim of terrorizing people or threatening to harm them or imperiling their lives, honor, freedoms, security or rights or exposing the environment or any facility or public or private property to hazards or occupying or seizing them, or endangering a national resource, or international facilities, or threatening the stability, territorial integrity, political unity or sovereignty of independent States. According to this definition, fighting perpetrators of these forms of violence doesn’t constitute an act of terrorism, i.e fighting individuals or groups or bodies threatening one’s territorial integrity, political unity or sovereignty of independent States. According to U.S. definition of terrorism as contained in the Annual Country Reports on Terrorism: the term ‘terrorism’ means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against nonchalant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents. Apparently this definition doesn’t cover the fate that befalls Afghan and Pakistani civilians killed on daily bases, in their homes, by unmanned NATO drones, helicopters, night raids, etc, in the name of hunting Al-Qaida and Taliban terrorists, since this violence is perpetrated by state or rather super-state, but not by subnational groups. Also, this definition doesn’t cover invasion and occupation of sovereign countries, both acts normally considered crimes under international law. No matter how violent an act is, no matter how bloody it is, however unjustifiable it is, however irresponsible it is, the definition of terrorism has become speculative and relative. An act described by one opinion group as terrorism is considered self-defence by another; a terrorist in the eyes of one person is a freedom fighter to another. A terrorist in a given epoch is a statesman in another. For instance, the proposed UN Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism, a legal framework for fighting terrorism, which has been under discussion since 2002, could not be adopted because of difference of opinion among Member States on the very definition of the phenomenon. The block representing the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), for instance, proposed the inclusion of a clause that reads: The activities of the parties during an armed conflict, including in situations of foreign occupation, as those terms are understood under international humanitarian law, which are governed by that law, are not governed by this Convention. The activities undertaken by the military forces of a State in the exercise of their official duties, inasmuch as they are in conformity with international law, are not governed by this Convention. The bottom line is that some UN Member States, particularly from the third world, consider people resisting foreign occupation, freedom fighters not enemy combatants or illegal combatants or terrorists. Therefore, there is no universally accepted definition of terrorism. Thus, the controversy remains as long as the appreciation of the issue is marred by lack of objectivity on the part of stakeholders.

The semantic controversy notwithstanding, individual countries, regional and international bodies have, in the past decade or so, equipped themselves with the necessary legal tools, in form of national laws and regional/international conventions, to tackle what they consider terrorism. Examples of national laws include the US Patriot Act (2001), the UK Terrorism Act (2006), the French Loi 2006-64 (2006), etc. Regional/International conventions on fighting terrorism include, the Council of Europe Convention on the Prevention of Terrorism 2006 [CECPT], the Arab Convention for the Suppression of Terrorism (1998), the OAU(now AU) Convention on the Prevention and Combating of Terrorism (1999), the OIC Convention on Combating International Terrorism (1999), the Inter-American Convention Against Terrorism, the ASEAN Convention on Counter Terrorism (2007), etc.