Another hostage death forced the Arab press to focus on the killers and their victims. Rasha Saad looks at motives and defences The beheading of US hostage Paul Johnson in Saudi Arabia came as a shock to millions of people who had been following the story. Arab commentators were no less shaken by the savagery of the killing, as was reflected in the press. The majority of the articles published the day after the slaughter condemned it as inhuman. Throughout the rest of the week stories tended to be more analytical of the whole phenomenon of terrorism. On Sunday, Ahmed Al-Rabei wrote in his column in the daily Asharq Al-Awsat on the initial reaction of shock that was felt by many people. "How can we explain to hundreds of millions of people that we wash our hands of this atrocious act and that we are in pain and sorrow to see an innocent man with his head separated from his body, an act that only savages who do not have in their heart the slightest humanity or mercy can perform?" Al-Rabei continued to pose questions to which he had no answer. "How could anyone cut the head of his brethren in humanity and call that jihad, heroism and faith?... What made them so heartless? What kind of books do they read and what kind of interpretations of the Qur'an have they adopted?... Do they read a Qur'an or the Prophet's sayings other than ours?" Al-Rabei's column, "Those who slaughtered our culture", also said that those who killed Johnson had done more harm to the image of Arab and Islamic world than opponents. "If all those who hate Arabs and Muslims and our culture gathered to decide the best way to distort our image, they would not have come up with something better than those sick people who chopped off the head of an innocent man in the name of religion and who ran his image on satellite TV to be seen by everyone on all continents." Added Al-Rabei, "Those who slaughtered the hostage were slaughtering their own people, culture and religion and ruining the reputation of all of us [Arabs and Muslims]... It is an act that words cannot describe." Saudi papers were also quick to condemn the killing which many Saudi writers called barbaric. They also praised their security forces for the quickness in finding Abdul-Aziz Al-Muqrin, the head of the group that abducted Johnson, who was later killed in a shoot-out with the police. Writers argue that the war against terrorism in the kingdom was far from over and that working to help Saudi youth reshape their ideologies was the first step towards ending terrorism. In the Saudi daily Okaz Khaled Hamad Al- Suleiman wrote on Tuesday that the Saudi war against terrorism had not ended with the killing of Al-Muqrin and that "we [Saudis] must prepare ourselves to pursue the war on the rest of them [terrorists] and chase them wherever they are to uproot those whose hands are stained with blood and help those whose minds have been contaminated by terrorist ideology." Al-Suleiman wrote that before Johnson's death, he had spoken to a mutual friend who described how much Johnson respected Saudi culture and how strongly he had supported Arab and Islamic causes. When Al-Suleiman heard the news of Johnson's death, his reaction was: "Those fools have killed another innocent sympathiser." "Maybe we have been forced into a crazy battle with barbarians who do not differentiate their victims, but it is definitely a battle we are sure to win because we do not have another option if we want the next Saudi generation to live in the sun and free instead of in darkness and in caves." In a more pragmatic and futuristic approach, Saudi writer Jamal Khashouggi predicts what he calls "a post-Al-Qaeda era" in the kingdom that puts internal reform on top of its agenda. In the UAE Al-Ittihad newspaper on Tuesday Khashouggi wrote that the killing of Al-Muqrin and his men by Saudi security forces was an achievement and that it was a matter of time before they rounded up the entire network. "Al-Qaeda had used up its terrorist network and infrastructure in Saudi Arabia. Its supporters in the kingdom will definitely feel the heat and will despair when they realise that the victory they seek is untenable." Khashouggi believed that since Al-Qaeda was the product of an ideology in the Saudi community that rejects modernisation, then internal reform is the only way to counter it. "Our task and greatest jihad now is the battle for a reform and development process [which we were promised last year]. Such a process will be sufficient to confront the ideology that brought Al-Qaeda from one side and impeded development from the other." Abdullah Iskandar wrote on Sunday in the London-based Al-Hayat on the external challenges that might face Saudi Arabia in its fight against terror. Alarmed by Washington urging its citizens to leave the kingdom, Iskandar warned that such steps were exactly what the terrorists want. He called on Saudi Arabia not to allow security issues to be used as a pretext to weaken the kingdom or its economy. "The kingdom is a heavyweight exporter of oil which has plenty of Arab and foreign help to support its industry and internal development. Spreading fears among foreigners and calling on them to leave the country indirectly serves the cause of extremists who seek to weaken the kingdom." Iskandar called on the US to support the kingdom in its fight against terrorism instead of attacking it. "Perhaps the US elections or hatred towards the kingdom from some circles in the US are behind such exaggerated calls [on Americans to leave the country]. If they [Americans] are concerned with the safety of their citizens then they should cooperate with the kingdom to try to ensure their safety instead of launching a campaign against the country." In the London-based Al-Quds Al-Arabi Abdul- Wahab Al-Afandi focussed on Johnson's death to provide an analytical perspective to the phenomenon of terrorism. In his article on Monday Al-Afandi wrote that terrorism is a mass media phenomenon in its essence and that the terrorist act fills a media void in Arab countries. However, this temporary media success hides a basic political weakness for the terrorist. "Terrorist acts attract media interest because they stimulate basic human instincts. However, as soon as terrorists step into the spotlight, their opponents -- no matter how weak their ethical values -- become morally better. Al-Afandi proceeds that this ethical status reaches its high when the terrorist is linked to blackmailing as happened in Johnson's case. The abductors, he argued, did the same as their counterparts in Abu Ghraib when they added another crime to their list and published photos and videos of their atrocities, pushing the world to sympathise with the victim. "In this context Abdul- Aziz Al-Muqrin and his henchmen committed suicide the day they killed Johnson." Al-Afandi also drew a psychological comparison between the killing of a hostage at the hands of his abductors and the death from torture of a detainee in Abu Ghraib or any other prison. "Both mean abuse of an innocent individual by criminals and represent a reversal of values in that power that moves into the hands of those who violate the code of ethics." However, the difference lies in that those who torture a prisoner till death "try to cover up what they did. Abductors, on the other hand, publicly announce their crime and regard it as heroic and honourable."
