Hypocrisy has to end to defeat terror groups

By Dr Ameer Ali

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  May 20 11:42 PM

  HYPOCRISY HAS TO END TO DEFEAT ISLAMIST TERROR

  Dr Ameer Ali
  The West Australian, 21 May 2015

  The so-called experts on counterterrorism have repeated their hackneyed theme that young Australians who succumb to the temptation of fighting overseas for Islamic State are a misguided Muslim minority and that the best way to dissuade them is through social engineering and education.

  It is time that we reassessed the situation. IS is a murderous but technologically sophisticated Islamist group that is determined to create a utopian Islamic Caliphate in Iraq and Syria, and if possible, make it transnational. The behaviour, philosophy and policies of its leaders and foot soldiers, activists and sympathisers are indisputably tyrannical, anti-pluralist, misogynistic and, in the view of most Muslim moderates, anti-Islamic.

  However, the crucial question to answer is whether the IS and its cohorts like al Qaida, Boko Harem, the Taliban and others are symptoms of a virulent disease or the disease itself.

  So far, all the security and counterterrorism measures undertaken by the US and its allies, including Australia, have deliberately assumed that terrorism perpetrated by IS and its allies is a modern plague that can be eradicated by military means. This is a diabolical concealment of the basic fact that it was the self-centred foreign policies of the Western powers after World War II, particularly in relation to the Muslim Middle East, and more specifically the foreign policy of the US since the end of the Cold War, that has produced Islamist terrorism.

  This is not a revelation but an impeccably documented and published fact by independent political scientists, academics and researchers, yet arrogantly rejected by Western powers, all in the interests of wealth and power.

  The Muslim masses in the Middle East have been crying in vain for decades for freedom from political oppression, relief from economic deprivation and amelioration of social injustice. But every time they agitated, raised their voice and rose in open revolt, as in 2011, their protesting voice was silenced, open revolt was suppressed mid legal avenues were closed. The local ruling regimes with tacit superpower approval have continued to maintain the status quo. This is the disease.

  More than half a century of Western mismanagement of the Middle East has accentuated this problem. The British and the French to start with, later joined by the Germans, Russians and now the Americans, have been the puppet masters who have individually and collectively stage-managed to keep in power the ancient regime. It is against this background that one should look at the rise and progress of Islamic extremism.

  The Western powers, their allies in the Muslim world, and the so-called Muslim moderates have pontificated over the past 50 years about the glories of a peaceful Islam and the democratic path for economic, prosperity and social justice without anything to show as proof of their achievements. The extremists, on the other hand, at least in the eyes of the Muslim youth, are offering demonstrable solutions such as al-Qaida’s success over the invading Russians in Afghanistan, the Taliban’s implementation of Sharia and establishing an Islamic Caliphate by the IS.

  While the moderate Muslims and Muslim community leaders with support from their governments could only offer religious and theoretical rhetoric to a critically minded younger generation, the extremists are pinpointing through the social media the injustices meted out to Muslims by the ruling regimes. While the state-backed and commercial media fail to discuss the root causes of the disease, the extremists’ social media is filling the gap with great success. Is it any wonder teenagers are enticed by the extremists’ propaganda?

  Ever since the infamy of the 9/11 attacks, no world forum, including the United Nations has dared to open the debate about the root causes of international terrorism and anyone who opens the subject has been dismissed as a conspiracy theorist. This hypocrisy has to end if we are serious about defeating terrorism and achieving peace and prosperity.

  Vested interests do not obviously want to discuss the root causes because there is profit to be amassed out of investing in counterterrorism. Trillions of scarce dollars have been spent on the military industry and thousands of young lives have been lost in counterterrorism battles to the detriment of the real and more productive economy.

  Increasing unemployment, escalating budget deficits, ballooning national debts and shrinking economic growth have become the norm of today’s industrial economies. No one talks about full employment as a growth objective today.

  It is time that nations faced the facts about Islamist extremism and terror and stopped being deluded by a fictitious narrative perpetrated by the establishment that terrorism is a political and social disease that can be cured by measures of counterterrorism. It is, on the contrary, a symptom of a more virulent disease that should to be discussed more transparently to arrive at workable solutions.

  Dr Ameer Ali Is a lecturer at the school of management and governance at Murdoch University. Australia