In the name of religion, they kill
Monday, 29 June 2015
Mohamed Chebarro/Al Arabiya
In the name of God they kill.
In the name of prophets they kill.
In the name of the holy month they kill.
In the name of their leader they kill.
In the name of a vane idea they kill.
They kill too because they disagree with someone else’s god.
They kill too because they deem other prophets impostures.
They kill too because they reject other people’s beliefs.
They kill too to disrupt other faith’s festivities.
They kill too because the other is different.
In protest to oppression they claim to kill.
In protest to their dispossession they insure that they kill.
In protest to social norms they disagree with they kill.
In protest to their alleged alienation and lack of social skills they kill.
In protest to their lack of fortune they kill.
In protest to their lack of social adaptability they kill.
In protest to their failure they kill.
In thuggery and petty crimes they believed and now they killed innocents.
In lunacy and in the hearing of voices, some of them believed and killed innocents in response to those voices that no one else has heard.
In freedom they never believed.
In freedom of expression they never believed.
In tolerance they never believed.
In multiculturalism they never believed.
In peace on earth they never believed.
In earth and the life on it they never believed, and in their killing innocents they believed that they will win the afterlife.
Against the Satan they claim to stand.
Against imperialism they claim to fight.
Against the American way of life they pretend to have gathered to fight.
Against the oppressive Israelis they said, they scream, that they have rallied.
Against their brothers and sisters mosques and neighborhoods they fight.
What of it?
And the results? The Palestinians have not been liberated and some sadly recall the days they lived peacefully under occupation.
They claimed to be helping Syrians break the clamp of dictatorship but their attacks seem more engineered to break the revolution of the Syrians’ back, and increase the suffering of civilians of all faith, sects and ethnicity in that country.
The perpetrators and their heinous crimes were against God, religion, culture and mankind!
The struggle in Iraq is to redress balance between an oppressed Sunni population in post Saddam Iraq and the oppressing Shiites who were installed in power due to Western intervention and later Iranian clout and influence. But it is the Sunni Iraqis that are displaced and Sunni Iraqi cities and heritage that they continue to destroy after looting them.
In Libyan town, Kuwaiti and Saudi mosques the victims are innocent civilians, in Somalia, Egypt and Yemen too.
ISIS, the Brigades of God, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, al-Shabaab, Hezbollah, all of these groups are tools to divide and destroy.
The lone gunmen in Tunisia that killed unarmed holiday makers is simply a criminal. These acts hurt Tunisia and its ten million hardworking citizens who care not for afterlife but for the immediate life of their kid’s fortune and education. Is this not what all Holy books called for, to live and strive to win in the afterlife?
In Kuwait, a mosque was targeted, just as mosques in Saudi Arabia were, and ISIS or others claimed responsibility for attacks that killed and maimed civilians. Attacking a mosque clearly disregards the sanctity of prayer, regardless of whether it is a Shiite or Sunni who is praying. They have claimed they are hitting at Iran and its growing influence and intervention in the region. It is bizarre how a group of villains believe that killing Kuwaitis in Kuwait, or Saudis in Saudi Arabia is likely to hurt Iran or its allies.
The three attacks on three continents is yet another ISIS effort to drive a wedge between states in the Middle East, and a wedge between Sunni and Shiites to divide those states and societies, as well as to further divide communities that have made up those countries for many years and to alienate Muslims living amidst non-Muslims.
Whether the attacks were planned to take place simultaneously or not, one thing is crystal clear – the perpetrators and their heinous crimes were against God, religion, culture and mankind!
Commemorating the 15 Saudi terrorists
Monday, 29 June 2015
Abdulrahman al-Rashed/Al Arabiya
It came as no surprise that the suicide bomber of the Shiite mosque in Kuwait was a Saudi citizen, yet it pained everyone. In May, the suicide bombers of the two mosques in eastern Saudi Arabia were also Saudi. A video showed that a terrorist arrested in Iraq was also Saudi, and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has announced that one of its Saudi fighters has been killed. Meanwhile, last month Al-Nusra Front said one of its field commanders, also Saudi, was killed. In April, an American drone in Yemen killed a Saudi citizen from among Al-Qaeda leaders. The list goes on.
Saudi terrorists threaten Saudi Arabia before any other country
The picture I just drew reveals a wave of extremists. Most of those killed or who are still fighting across the world are youths, most under the age of 30. Most Saudi extremists today were children when the Sept. 11 attacks happened. Those attacks shocked Saudi society then, as 15 of those who carried out the crime were Saudi nationals, accompanied by two Emiratis, a Lebanese and an Egyptian.
Back then, the question was why Al-Qaeda chose such a big number from one nationality when it has hundreds of fighters from other nationalities? At the time, we said the organization targeted Saudi Arabia when it attacked the United States in order to pit the two countries against one another. There were fierce calls to punish Riyadh, as many considered the kingdom a source of evil. These calls only dissipated when then-U.S. President George W. Bush chose Iraq as a target for revenge.
The question now is why do the Saudis not fix their society and prevent intellectual deviance? It is clear that those deviants, who are in their thousands, are a product of extremism, otherwise that Saudi national would not have gone to Kuwait based on a mere phone call he received from ISIS. The killer carried out his attack like he was under hypnosis. He blew himself up – killing 27 and injuring 300 – just a few hours after arriving in Kuwait.
Carrying out the attack required no more than issuing an order to head to a place he may have never visited before. The ISIS representative received him at the airport, provided him with an explosive belt, and transported him to the mosque to commit his crime. How many deviants in Saudi Arabia await such phone calls to blow themselves up without question?
Evading responsibility
Extremism is not just Saudi Arabia’s problem, as Tunisia has a large share of fighters among extremist organizations, and does Morocco and dozens of other countries. However, the situation will not improve by evading the truth and making excuses. Extremism has been a problem since politics found its way into mosques in the 1980s, and since clerics began to issue fatwas (religious edicts) regarding political affairs.
Without acknowledging the spread of extremist ideologies, it will not be possible to fight and eliminate terrorism, because whenever extremists are arrested, others will take their place. It is wrong to view this as just a security problem, as it is snowballing into a political crisis. Extremists are a huge threat to their countries’ security as well as to the world’s, and they jeopardize interests and relations.
Some are evading responsibility under the excuse that it is a general problem, and say proof of that is Iran having tens of thousands of extremists fighting in Iraq, Syria and Yemen. The difference between us and Iran is that Saudi terrorists threaten Saudi Arabia before any other country. Iranian terrorists are engaged in systems affiliated with their government, such as the army. After the Sept. 11 attacks, Riyadh sought to repair the relations that the 15 Saudi hijackers almost destroyed. It succeeded, but with great difficulty. However, a new round of terrorism and blame has now begun.
