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| File pictures of Homs (top) and Grozny (below) |
This think piece by Jamal Khashoggi --
Saudi Arabia’s analyst, author and kingpin of the impending Al Arab TV news
channel -- appears in Arabic in his weekly column for al-Hayat
daily
Investigators
crowding around Dzhohkar Tsarnaev, the second Boston bombings suspect, would
wish to probe his mind.
But
they find it hard to question him by the book, as he lies critically wounded in
hospital.
They
would be looking for an answer to the question puzzling them most. How, they
wonder, did an immigrant Muslim teenager fully integrated in American society,
who – in the words of one of his friends – “became like anyone of us Americans”
and who (as he wrote on one of his social media pages) loved life and money,
turn into a terrorist killer of innocents?
Amateur
terrorists, who are not affiliated to any organization and who self-recruit
through the Internet, are the security analyst’s nightmare.
The
analyst is unable to find leads to track them down and expose them before they
commit their crimes.
Two
such cases came to light last week in Canada and France. In both instances, two
young men mirrored the case of the two Tsarnaev brothers suspected of the Boston
marathon bombings.
The
phenomenon, best described as “the case of the two Tsarnaev brothers,” might
trigger a new wave of Islamophobia.
Surely,
someone must now be asking on rightwing American TV channels or printed media
pages, “How can I make sure my Muslim neighbor, who seems gentlemanly, amiable
and no less American than anyone of us, won’t suddenly turn out to be a
terrorist?”
Though
it sounds awkward to Muslim and Arab ears, the question is justified.
It
reminds me of the words of my friend Abdel Rahman al-Rashed, head of Alarabiya
News Channel.
Rashed
came in for a lot of flak when he coined his famed phrase, “Not all Muslims
are terrorists; sadly though, most terrorists in the world are Muslim.”
To
help investigators striving to probe the mind of Dzhohkar Tsarnaev, let me map
for them information from the brain waves of an angry Muslim.
I
am already aware that an American or Western politician would automatically
dismiss as “justification for terrorism” any attempt to dwell on reasons for a Muslim’s
wrath.
The
politician realizes that discussing anger motives inevitably leads to
revisiting old files that better remain closed and the apportionment of blame.
Oblivious
of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s key role in the Chechnya
massacres, some congressmen are urging greater security cooperation between
Washington and Moscow instead of setting up a congressional fact-finding panel,
for example.
As
world politicians are transfixed by global counter-terrorism cooperation, they
would do well to brace themselves for the next wave of “Islamic” terror.
I
anticipate such a wave by virtue of a “pattern” set by its antecedents.
The
first wave in the mid-nineties was a reaction to the incidents in Bosnia and
Algeria.
The
next wave, in the early years of the second millennium, revolved around Iraq,
Afghanistan and Chechnya.
The
third wave will surge as a sequel to the massacres in Syria, now the
fountainhead of Muslim ire.
The
ire is fed by incessant images of injustice, desecration and abuses.
Angry
Muslim youths are exposed to a daily flood of video clips showing Syrian regime
forces torturing to death and killing civilians or cutting their victims’
limbs.
TV
news channels bar such images, but they are for show on YouTube, when their
rightful place should be the International Criminal Court instead of the social
media platforms.
Contrasting
the revolting clips from Syria are those emerging from Burma. They show
opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi receiving her Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo and
Burmese gloating over newfound freedoms. But they recount little about the
abhorrent persecution, hate, killing, burning and rape of Muslims in Myanmar.
Tamerlan
Tsarnaev and his younger brother Dzhohkar might have watched such video clips,
which could have reignited their indignation as ethnic Chechens.
They
must have also seen loads of images showing the suffering of their countrymen
and co-religionists. They could have come across images of Russian soldiers
laughing as their officer uses a small Swiss knife to bleed a Chechen fighter
to death.
Here
again, the place for such images should be the International Criminal Court, though
no Chechnya referrals as yet.
What
Bashar al-Assad is now doing in Syria is what Putin did in
Chechnya before. Pictures don’t lie. They show Syrian cities biting the
dust, much like Grozny.
Today’s
irate Muslim mind sees that the guardian angel of Assad and his regime is the
same man who pulverized Grozny and killed more than 100,000 Chechens.
The
irate Muslim mind pays no heed to things like the international situation or
the balance of interests.
It’s
an incensed mind turning thoughtless.
Had
the Tsarnaev brothers been thinking straight, they would not have targeted the
marathon in Boston, the compassionate city that embraced them.
The
aftereffects of film recordings on the fuming Muslim mind are massive. They
magnify in the Muslim’s mindset:
- A sense of injustice
- The feeling of belonging to a targeted minority
- Suspicions that Americans are supporting Assad on the quiet and remain closemouthed on Putin’s crime and the Burmese opposition leader’s hypocrisy, and
- A belief that Muslims have been on the receiving end of the nastiest crimes in the previous century and to date -- the two exceptions being the Jews’ suffering at the hands of the Nazis and the Armenians’ suffering at the Ottomans’ hands. But whereas Jews and Armenians received global apologies and reparations, there was nothing of the kind for Muslims.
In
context, no one should underestimate the hurt the Palestinian Nakba etched on
the Muslim Arab memory. No population was uprooted from its native land such as
the Palestinian population. Yet no one is prepared to offer Palestinians an
apology. And who would even dare launch a museum in New York commemorating the
Nakba?
Also,
who would dare call for an official Russian apology to the 1.5 million Chechens
evicted from their homes and forcibly dispersed across the former Soviet Union,
where tens of thousands of them succumbed to disease and starvation?
When
Chechen survivors revolted in their quest for independence, they were met by
Russia’s fire and brimstone as the world looked away.
One
can imagine how stories of the horrors and crimes committed in Chechnya dulled
the rationale of an angry Muslim’s mind, turning a civil young man into a
dangerous terrorist.
Some
will read into my think piece a justification for terrorism. It is not.
No
one can justify terrorism. But the only way to eradicate it is to address its
causes.
Someone
needs to have the courage to stand up and tell the West in the face: Your
double standards are causing the rage breeding terror.
