Dialogues of Naguib Mahfouz: Terror, injustice,freedom By Mohamed Salmawy A foreign journalist asked Naguib Mahfouz to comment on the recent Sinai bombings Mahfouz: Such attacks happen all over the world and no country is safe any more. The question one should ask is whether such attacks have become likely in any given country or whether they remain a remote possibility. In Iraq, for example, such attacks are now a daily ordeal. Hardly a day passes without a bomb going off, not just in Baghdad, but in the rest of the country. The same thing is true in Palestine, where an occupied people are struggling to rid themselves of occupation, and where an occupying force uses violence against the Palestinian people, destroying homes, assassinating political activists and bombing entire neighbourhoods. In Egypt the situation is different. A bombing may happen here or there, but not with the frequency we see in Iraq or Palestine. And the motives of the attackers differ. In Egypt, the attackers aim to strike at the national economy through tourism. But because such incidents happen all over the world tourists are no longer shocked by such attacks. In Dahab we've seen tourists continuing their vacations as usual, for they know that such attacks could happen anywhere, even in their own countries. There is another aspect of terrorism, a sense of political injustice. This provides the fertile soil in which the political discourse of Al-Qaeda has grown. It is also the source of inspiration for groups that believe that the US-led West is taking a biased stand in the Arab-Israeli conflict and is hostile to Islam. It comes at a time when ideologies have failed and religion has become the last resort for many. This is why certain groups use religion as an ideology. Unfortunately, theirs is not true religion but one that is fraught with anger and violence, with bitterness born of a sense of injustice. Theirs is a religion has been remodelled to justify certain ends. I am not saying this to justify terror but I want to explain its causes. The world is to some degree responsible for terrorism. The world has turned Islam into a new enemy, just as it once did with communism. This is a wrong view of Islam, and it isn't in the interests of international peace and security. We need understanding and dialogue, not animosity and conflict. Journalist: And the Danish cartoons? Mahfouz: For us, the cartoons were an affront to Islam, however unintended that affront may have been. There is freedom in the West. People can criticise anything, even sacred things. Those who have caricatured a holy symbol of Islam, Prophet Mohamed, perhaps didn't realise that this would antagonise millions of Muslims across the world. The reaction that followed was sometimes disproportionate. What the crisis tells us is that freedom doesn't provide the answer to everything. A journalist should be knowledgeable enough to assess the reaction. He must think ahead and use freedom in a manner that doesn't cause unnecessary harm to his own people or to others.
