Dina Ezzat tries to make sense out of what happened in Sharm El-Sheikh Two racist statements made this week received little if any attention in the press that duly published them. The first was by American congressman Tom Tancredo who told a prominent US talk show that the US should attack Mecca in case it was nuked by terrorists. The other was by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon who, ahead of a trip to France, launched an attack against French Muslims, bluntly accusing them of being anti-Semitic. In any other week, commentators of the Egyptian press would have responded to the remarks of Tancredo and Sharon. This week, however, they did not. It is not clear if they failed to address these issues because of being overwhelmed with news of the Sharm El-Sheikh attacks or because they felt it awkward to defend Islam at a time when a few Muslims were being severely criticised -- and fairly so -- for bombarding cities and killing innocent civilians. It was probably a case of awkwardness. The news pages were packed this week with stories of terrorism -- "London wakes up to a new wave of terror"; "British Muslims denounce terrorism"; "Muslims in France say they're opposed to the killing of innocent civilians"; "Italy calls for tougher anti-terrorist measures." These were some of the major headlines on Thursday and Friday morning. Come Saturday and it was "Sharm El-Sheikh hit by terror"; "Sharm El-Sheikh under siege"; "Sharm El-Sheikh says no to terrorism"; "Sharm El-Sheikh bids its victims farewell"; "Sharm El-Sheikh tries to recuperate". On the sidelines there were stories of a terrorist group claiming responsibility for kidnapping two Algerian diplomats in Baghdad, of Damascus' efforts to prevent terrorist from crossing its borders to Iraq, and an alleged terrorist who attempted to throw a bomb at the motorcade of US President George W Bush while on a visit to Georgia. It was interesting to note that a few writers who indulged in attacking the heinous acts of terror in Sharm El-Sheikh took the time to reflect on the centrality of the perceptions and image of Islam in the framework of the war on terrorism. The struggle against terrorism has so far been undermined by the failure of Muslim societies to acknowledge the need to promote the true, tolerant call of Islam that has been overshadowed by radical interpretations, argued Mohamed El-Sayed Said, a prominent Egyptian commentator who wrote in Al-Ahram on Monday. El-Said argued that the first step in the struggle against Islam-linked terrorism should be to acknowledge that "terrorism has its roots and intellectual heritage and values in Arab/Islamic civilisation [not Islam itself]. For the most part these roots are inspired by the extremist interpretations of Islam." Moreover, El-Said reminded that the vast majority of terror attacks that are conducted by so-called Jihad groups fail to hit the US or Israel that they claim are their main targets. Instead they turn the lives of Muslim societies and communities in the West into an unending nightmare. El-Said stressed that no excuses should be offered for such attacks that have inflicted much more harm on Arab and Muslim causes than the schemes of so-called Western imperialism. On Tuesday, in the daily Al-Akhbar, columnist Galal Dweidar called on Al-Azhar to assume its responsibilities in telling the world and Muslims alike that Islam provides no pretext for terror attacks. "The time has come for this great and important religious institution to bring its weight to bear on the domestic, regional and international levels and to get its Ulamas to launch a far-ranging campaign to explain the true meaning of Islam." Mean while a few commentators said the West should not overemphasise the Islamic factor when it addresses terrorism. Political justice, argued Taha Abdel-Alim in Al-Ahram on Monday, is a key factor in the war on terror. It is when political injustice comes to an end that "the supporters of terror will fail to win new disciples." "The worst sin committed by the United States is that it confuses terrorism with the legitimate right of people to resist occupation," Abdel-Alim wrote. Al-Ahram 's editor-in-chief Osama Saraya, Al-Gomhuriya 's Samir Ragab and Al-Akhbar 's editor-in-chief Mohamed Barakat appealed to the nation to defeat terror by pursuing a normal life. The need to adopt a balanced and well thought out reaction to the acts of terror was what Fahmi Howeidi preached in his regular Tuesday article on the opinion pages of Al-Ahram. "What happened was indeed a heinous act of terror. There is no argument about this. But as we attempt to deal with this story we should not confine ourselves to asking what happened and forget to look ahead to what is coming." Howeidi expressed concern that continued media indulgence in calling the terrorists of Sharm El-Sheikh every name in the book could undermine any serious thinking of what needs to be done so as to avoid waking up to another Sharm El-Sheikh terror attack.
