Terror can be defeated Confronting terror is no longer an optional task or one that can be put off. In Egypt, and other countries around the region, terrorists have planted roots, made deals, acquired sponsors, and recruited supporters. They boast of their crimes and gloat in shedding the blood of innocents. The spate of bombings and killings conducted in Egypt by Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis is no exception. Groups of this sort have sprouted up across the region, blazing a trail of destruction in their wake.
No Arab country is immune. The disease has spread in every part of this region, imperilling lives and undermining the essence of trust and humanity.
Terrorists work in the dark. They hide behind fake addresses and live under the cover of fake names. They live in isolation and prey on the minds of misfits. They feed on ignorance and feed it to others. And they have no respect for human life or what they consider the mundane notions of wellbeing and happiness.
Theirs is a dark message, and it needs to be eradicated. Nations who have been blighted with terror have no option but to strike hard against the terrorist, flush them out of their lairs, dry up their finances, prosecute their supporters, and track down their collaborators.
But this is not the whole story. We tried this so-called security option before, and although it kept the terrorists at bay it failed to eliminate the climate in which they receive nourishment and prepare for the next round.
Terrorists thrive in ignorance, and we can fight ignorance. They thrive on fanaticism, and we have ways to reduce fanaticism. They thrive on the wrong type of education, and we can deal with that. But above all, terrorists thrive on poverty, marginalisation and injustice — all of which are matters that we have a duty to end.
Terrorists thrive in societies that don't teach their children to accept diversity and tolerate differences in views.
The ideal society for terrorists is one that is totalitarian in its attitude, biased in its thinking, too callous to help the poor, and too arrogant to accept the opinions of others.
If terrorists are running wild in our midst, then we have certain problems that we need to address. We need, for example, to start a programme of sustainable development. We need to have a constitution that defends the rights of all those who are marginalised. We need to have a culture that accepts those who are different and tolerates views that diverge from the mainstream.
Development is not just an economic goal, but also a main component of citizenry. For unless you abolish injustice, poverty and hunger, your citizens will be prone to the madness of the fanatics and their financers and ideologues and arm suppliers.
We need to create a concept for citizenry that is based on equality before the law and basic social freedoms and rights. People who have a sense of dignity are less prone to fanaticism than those who are not. So we need to ensure that religious and ethnic minorities, remote communities and distant villages, everyone has a right to self-improvement and equal treatment by the law.
Terror cannot coexist with freedom, for it draws its power from a harassed state of mind. It speaks to those who seek in supremacist ideas a way out of their diminished existence. It has allure only to people who don't think and would rather receive orders from their masters.
To fight terror, we need to strengthen the institutions of civil society and assert the importance of human dignity.
We need to create a new cultural and educational climate, one that is based on hard work, creativity and inclusion. In schools and universities, we need to teach a curriculum of humanism as well as science. We can immunise our children against terror by giving them the chance to think for themselves and to look to the future with hope.
