While President Bush is trying to focus the attention of the nation
and the world on the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq, terrorist
activity has been increasing worldwide: assaults on targets in Afghanistan,
shootings at U.S. marines in Kuwait, and the bombings of an open-air
market in the Philippines, a French supertanker in a port in Yemen,
and a crowded nightclub on the Indonesian island of Bali. There are
suspicions, moreover, that the sniper killings in the Washington, D.C.,
area may also be organized terrorism.
If all of these attacks are the work of Al Qaeda or other terrorist
cells, it becomes clearer than ever that the threat of terror continues
unabated and worldwide. It remains in fact a much more immediate menace
than Saddam Hussein. From Kuwait to Yemen to Mindanao in the Philippines
to Indonesia, all of the recent terrorism occurred in predominantly
Muslim societies. Virtually all of them have suffered terrorist onslaughts
long before the perpetrators carried their guerilla war into Europe
and North America.
Modern Islamism, in contrast to mainstream Islam, is religiously militant.
It preaches: "Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader.
Qur'an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our
highest hope." This movement began with the ban of the caliphate
system of government by British and French colonial governments after
the demise of the Ottoman empire. In 1928, Islamists in Egypt founded
the Muslim Brotherhood that demanded the reintroduction of Islamic law
(sharia) and soon began to threaten its opponents with violence.
In 1948, members of the Brotherhood assassinated Egypt's Prime Minister
Nokrashi, then unsuccessfully tried four times to assassinate President
Nasser, and in 1981 murdered President Sadat. Although officially banned
since 1954, Brotherhood disciples, running as independents, captured
17 seats in Egypt's parliament. Today, President Mubarak has ample reason
to fear that an American invasion of Iraq may lead to more Islamist
terror in Muslim countries.
In 1982, the Brotherhood staged an uprising in the Syrian city of Hamah,
but President Hafez Assad quashed it in a slaughter of some 20,000 men,
women, and children. Ideologically in the footsteps of the Brotherhood,
the mujahedeen (i.e., holy warriors) in Afghanistan fought the Soviets
from 1979 to 1989. In the mid-1990s, Afghanistan was conquered by an
even more rigid brand of Islamism, the Taliban, who subsequently gave
Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda sanctuary and support.
Over the past two decades, Islamist cells have spread throughout Southeast
Asia. For the Indonesian government, that so far did not take them serious,
the bloody bomb blasts in Bali painfully proved that not even the country's
traditionally tranquil pleasure island is safe from ruthless fanatics.
Since most of the 200 dead in Bali are Australians, the government in
Canberra suspects that its citizens may have been the prime target of
the attack. Already Australia's foreign minister proposed that the Southeast
Asian governments cooperatively fight the terrorists in "the arc
of Islamic instability" from Malaysia and Singapore to the southern
Philippines and Indonesia.
Fortuitously though, the recent incidents of terror offer a genuine
opportunity for Muslims and non-Muslims to come together in a coordinated
campaign against the al-Qaeda network. President Bush has shown little
inclination, however, to change his antagonistic attitude toward Arabs
and Muslims, an attitude that severely handicaps America in the war
against the Muslim militants. The President seems to be enthralled by
the advice he gets from Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon who just
visited the Bush White House for the seventh time. Sharon, one of the
most hated men in the Muslim world, considers Arabs and Muslims as inveterate
enemies of Israel and therefore sees no way to peace and cooperation
with them.
As long as this intransigent reactionary remains the President's political
bosom buddy, it is difficult to see how he can effectively reduce the
threat of Islamist terrorism for us and for the rest of the world.