Addressing militancy Militancy of the Islamic strain, which has grown in our midst, cloaked in false piety and dripping with the blood of the innocent, is as much a disservice to us as it is a bonus to our foes.
The history of Islamic militancy goes back to the 1970s, when Muslims started immigrating in numbers to the West. This, and the growing conversion to Islam of people born in America and Europe, attracted the attention of writers and research centres.
This coincided with the evident weakening of the Soviet Union, the traditional ogre for the Western media and governments.
Needing another ogre to use in defending the global expansion of capitalism, the West slowly but surely discovered the potential of militant Islam.
It was around this time that Zbigniew Brzezinksi, national security adviser under Jimmy Carter, started warning about the perils Islam supposedly posed to Judeo-Christian tradition.
This didn't stop the CIA, during the 1980s, from arming and training thousands of Muslim militants sent to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets — a policy that eventually led to the birth of Al-Qaeda.
When the 9/11 attacks took place, Al-Qaeda was solely blamed for the attack, although more than one writer, including influential Western observers, noted that the level of sophistication and planning exceeded that of the Afghanistan-based militant group.
From then on, Al-Qaeda assumed a mythical proportion, and its peril was used to dismantle several countries in the Middle East with the guiding hand of people such as L Paul Bremer, the once military governor of Iraq.
A picture emerges of a region now in the throes of the “creative chaos” American officials have long dreamt of, and Israel wouldn't have dreamt of having.
Iraq and Syria, two of the pillars of pan-Arabism, are all but falling apart, raked by militants of various creeds and dismembered by the latent sectarian distrust that had been buried and presumed dead for centuries.
The rut is now complete and it has come close to home since militants set up camp in North Sinai and started their trademark business of bombings across the country.
Fighting militants is not just by the gun. We have to deprive them of the weak and twisted theological bearings they claim as their own.
We have to update our understanding of Islam and make it more compatible to the age. This is the task the Prophet Mohamed entrusted to us many centuries ago, when he said: “You are the best judge of your own affairs.”
Militant Islam, in the form of Al-Qaeda and its affiliates, is so evil, so distant from the true teachings of Islam, that it offers us an opportunity to put the Prophet Mohamed's words to good use.
We have to confront militant Islam, and we cannot wait for the West to help us. The US administration owns an impressive host of spy satellites and is monitoring the entire world with sophisticated listening devices and remote sensing equipment. It is unconceivable that it cannot locate Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the leader and top cleric of Al-Qaeda, or the rest of the fanatical warlords crisscrossing our region.
But why should the Americans do that if the militants are doing the very thing that promotes Israel's hegemony in the region: dismantling its foes and weakening its adversaries?
We have to claim Islam for the good people of this region and beyond. Our clerics need to not only debunk the ridiculous dictates of Al-Qaeda, but offer guidance to average Muslims through a religion that is tolerant, forward looking, and compassionate — just the way Prophet Mohamed meant it to be.
We must restore the more enlightened image of Islam as a religion and culture through objective readings of the Quran and the Prophet's teachings.
