The mysterious abduction and release of Egyptian soldiers in Sinai is a thought provoking reason to ponder the link between terror and religion. Has the world become more radicalised? Can we believe that there is such a thing as religious terrorism? There are over 140 organisations, which are currently designated by various governments as terrorist groups; many of them unfortunately are linked with Islam. There is a plethora of words linking terrorists to Islam in the western and global media. We always see such terminology like: Islamism, Islamophobia, Jihad, Salafism, Militant Muslims and the rest. There are many such and such group, which associate themselves with these terms. But it is a misnomer to link terror with any religion for the simple reason that all monotheistic religions have general grounds that call for peace and tolerance and abstention from committing crimes or terror. Thus, if a believer in one such religion breaks the rules of the religion, it is not the fault of the religion. Rather, it is the individual practitioner (or group of practitioners), who are at fault. It is just like an incident in which a driver, who should stop at red lights, which are expressly designed to prohibit any traffic from proceeding, breaks the rule. It is not the fault of the red lights or the engineer who designed them or the law-maker who made the traffic law. The same is true, of course, of crimes committed in the name of Islam or Christianity or Judaism or any other religion. Acts of terror have occurred worldwide over the last decade and were unfortunately linked to Muslims and Islam. No place was immune to such atrocities. Some of them have happened on military barracks or in police stations or around them. Some targeted military and police personnel and were classified as mass murder crimes. They happened all around the world from the US to the UK, France, India, Pakistan and you name it. What happened in Sinai needs to be seen within the spectrum of this phenomenon. In Egypt, many people think that the administration and the government are impotent in fighting acts of violence against the Army such as the murder of 16 soldiers on August 5, 2012, and the kidnapping of seven others on May 16, 2013 in Sinai. Compare these atrocities with, the Fort Hood shooting, the crime committed by Nidal Malik Hassan, the American Army officer, on November 5, 2009. Or rather with the monstrosity committed by Mohamed Merah in Toulouse, Southern France, against three French soldiers and other innocent civilians in March 2012; or with the most recent murder of Lee Rigby, the British soldier outside the army Barracks in London; or the latest copy cat act of the attempted murder of Private Cedric Cordier in a busy commercial district outside Paris. One should also mention the likewise heinous atrocity in Norway on July 22, 2011 in which Anders Breivik, disguised as a policeman, murdered over seventy young men and women in cold blood on a quiet Norwegian island. If one would accept that the American administration or its European counterparts are impotent, one can have second thoughts in Egypt's case. Hence, we must admit that the criminal events in Sinai during the last two years are not an indicator that Sinai is out of control. Though the Egyptian Army deployment in Sinai is restricted by the terms of the Camp David Peace Accords of 1979, the military is doing a good job to minimise acts of terror. The nature of the peninsula with its topography and demography is a vital factor that hampers efforts to create a situation of 100 per cent security. The Sinai tribal chiefs and members of the various tribes and clans know each other and have social codes of ethics that help prevent crimes. The government should immediately work on the development projects of Sinai and efforts to establish urban communities that would host at least 6 million inhabitants ought to go hand in hand. I have heard some wise words from some Sinai wise men calling for doing this sooner than later. Only then could we curb terrorism and return to a near-zero crime rate that was enjoyed in the past. We also hope that the assumed affiliation of Islamist groups in Sinai with al-Qaeda or other splinter terrorist groups is just mere talk on the part of some media pundits. However, more and more effort is needed to counter extremist ideology through healthy discussion and debate.
