With the spate of terrorist attacks in France and elsewhere it has become obvious that terrorism is trying to market itself stronger and fiercer than ever. Towards this end, it exploits a gap created by European and Western policies in general, which have worked to ostracise second generation immigrants and treat them as second class citizens. As we observe the terrorist phenomenon, which has cast such a dark shadow over the entire world, we must pause to consider its causes. A top-down approach to this plague will not solve it. All the weapons of the world may succeed in defeating Daesh and eliminating its affiliates, but the more effective solution is to eliminate the causes that created terrorism and Daesh and its sisters in the first place. After the 11 September attacks against the US and the subsequent developments that led to the declarations of war against Afghanistan and then Iraq, which was entirely decimated by the US invasion that laid the cornerstone for terrorism through the occupation of that country, the dismantlement of the Iraqi national army and security establishments, and the pursuit of sectarian policies that ignited and fuelled hatred and vengeance, it was inevitable that the “Islamic State” would be born there. Five years after the events of 2011, Syria is still in convulsions, its people killing each other, the country torn by regional and international tugs-of-war and its soil a breeding ground for terrorist groups, especially Daesh. Yemen, too, has been destroyed after having fallen, first, into the hands of Al-Qaeda, then into the hands of the Houthis, and then into the hands of the coalition forces. In Libya, to which change had been delivered by NATO airplanes, which distributed millions of weapons to the Libyan opposition on top of the tons of arms that had been smuggled out from Libya's arsenals, every missile sowed more seeds of terrorism which burgeoned until Libya was reduced to a failed state, an incubator and an exporter of terrorism, and a threat to the region and the world. The Arab region is not just the victim of domestic problems such as poverty, lack of social justice, ignorance and superstition. It is also the victim of foreign interventions and colonialist policies for which Europe, today, is paying a heavy price. The fall of the Saddam Hussein regime destroyed a buttress in the Arab national security wall and tilted regional balances in favour of Turkey and Iran. The fall of the Gaddafi regime toppled another buttress and precipitated another shift in regional equations. Qatar and Turkey (which, following the failed coup, is in a state of turmoil that will affect the degree to which it intervenes in our region) seek to exploit this in order to promote their Islamist project, which they do by supporting fascist political forces and militia groups such as Daesh, regardless of the damage this inflicts on the security of the region. Because of such developments and attitudes, the security of the Arab region from Morocco to the Gulf is in grave peril due to the constant spread of Daesh thought and fighters and, at the same time, due to constant talk about destroying their cells so as to prevent their savage crimes, paving the way to the spectre of an all out war that will engulf the Arab region in the name of fighting terrorism. Terrorism dug its claws into crisis-plagued states in the Arab region and from there it began to target and strike Europe in retaliation for its racist and exclusivist policies. Immigrants are constantly being subjected to political, social and cultural harassments and attacks simply because they are Muslims. Some there are forever insisting on turning them into minorities who create a burden on French society and threaten the national fabric, reproducing the same debates over identity the obsession with which has caused so many tragedies in the past century. The cultural and social field has been abandoned to a collection of fanatics such as journalist Eric Zemmour, novelist Michel Houellebecq and the writer Renaud Camus who present themselves as intellectuals who stand up to the Islamic infiltration of France and as defenders of French culture. In fact, they are reproducing the pre-World War II scenario of persecution of the Jews. Political and ideological extremism combined with the abuse of free speech to vilify Muslims and their culture has generated a climate of hostility and a thirst for revenge against France among its Muslim citizens who were born, raised and educated there and who experience discrimination and marginalisation there. The psychological warfare and powerful terrorist threat that Europe is experiencing should compel it to remedy the question of immigrant communities not through exclusion but through assimilation, and the question of Islam in Europe not by targeting Muslims, their mosques and religious symbols or promoting the idea of deporting them all, but by adopting open-minded modernist cultural concepts, as advocated by the French writer Edwy Plenel in his book, Pour les Musulmans, which holds that the question of Islam in France should not be left to a group of extremist theorists and politicians who exploit this subject to advance their own political agendas. Social and political forces the world over need to recognise that terrorism is an industry in which all have had a hand. Terrorism was not born in a vacuum and it does not operate in a void. In order to confront and uproot that danger, it is important to identify, analyse and remedy the causes. Universal condemnations of terrorism or Daesh and declarations of war against them are not sufficient; not when those doing the condemning or declaring the war have helped create them, or have supported and even funded them. It is not enough to reiterate declarations against extremism and religious extremism in particular, when the same countries issuing condemnations have become extremist in their ideas, behaviour and policies, and extremist in defending their expanding territories, gains and interests. The situations in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen offer myriad examples. Terrorism has declared war against the world as a whole. It is challenging the policy of confronting terrorism on its own ground in order to prevent it from reaching the West. Terrorism has spread geographically and grown stronger through the media. It has begun to make war against the world with the same weapons with which the world had supplied it in the past. Like it or not, terrorism is a malignant growth that was born from the conflicts between regional and international powers and their wars over territory, wealth and influence. The malignancy simultaneously was bred by — and has fed on — poverty, discrimination, marginalisation, degradation and colonialist policies wherever they were carried out.
