JIHAD - WHO IS TO BLAME?

The stark horror of the public dismemberment of a young British soldier and the angry response by the English Defense League, towards the Muslim community, including the burning of a mosque, has reawakened the whole issue of who is to blame and what can be done about Jihadi terror.

This situation is not an uncommon scenario and follows on the recent Boston Marathon Bombing where there was the cold-blooded murder of three and the injuring of 264 persons. It preceded yet another murder of a French Soldier.

Jay H. Ell was immediately struck by the comment of an editor of a Muslim Newspaper, who stated that when he heard about the Boston bombing, he prayed to God that it wasn’t a Muslim who was the perpetrator. One does not need to belabor the number of incidents that have occurred since 9/11. Virtually all of these have been perpetrated in the name of Islam by Muslim Jihadis justifying the Muslim editor's fear. 

Governments recognize that they are dealing with an asymmetric situation where a few people can wreak havoc. There is the overriding fear of them obtaining nuclear weapons or employing biological warfare or taking over a State as they did for practical purposes in Afghanistan. Also there is Iran, who is sponsoring two terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah, as a backdrop to all this Jihadi activity. The scenario is further complicated with the Middle East in turmoil where the question is whether the new governments will support the Jihadis or be against them?

WHO IS TO BLAME AND HOW TO RESPOND?

This all begs the question, who to blame and what should the societal response be?

* Prepare for a final war between all Islam and the West.

There are societal elements, like the English Defense League who see this as a war between the Muslims and the Western Judeo – Christians. They see Europe and the world being overtaken by Muslims who do not integrate into society but rather make demands that society adapts to them. The dire economic circumstances in Europe exacerbate the anger of these groups who perceive that they are taking their jobs as well. With each of these violent episodes they reiterate their doomsday predictions that the war is on. Other than rioting it is uncertain how they would deal with this situation. The ostracization and terrorizing of Muslims cannot stop the Jihadists. If anything they can create a fertile recruiting ground.

* Qualified justification for Jihadi behavior and a call to address the “real” Muslim concerns.

There are those who maintain that, while condemning the violence, that one must look at the root causes of this behavior. These groups include several liberal as well as Muslim groups. They argue to varying degrees that the West have scant disregard for the Muslims and the Islam religion. They point to the Iran and Afghanistan wars and the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians for example. However, with each act of violence these apologists have less and less credibility, as their position is hard to separate from that of the perpetrators. Like it or not they appear to be justifying the violence rather than outright condemnation of it. To a lesser or greater extent they are giving validity to the terrorists’ position. They need to condemn the violence with no ifs and buts.

This situation is the crux of the dilemma facing the Muslim world. While the Muslims generally feel strongly about some of these issues and the fact that they are being victimized and profiled as a result of the situation, their indecisiveness as a group to unconditionally condemn these acts of terror and the Jihadist entities perpetrating them does not help society isolate the broad mass of Muslims, who recoil like the Muslim editor and pray to God that it was not a Muslim who perpetrated the latest atrocity, from the Jihadi thugs.

* Work towards religious rapprochement.

Then there are those like Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sachs that form alliances with all religious groups and try to create a milieu that recognizes that differences between the monotheistic religions must be respected and work for peace and tolerance. Sachs gathered on Ground Zero with the leadership of the religions of the world and they all pledged peace and co- existence. As Sachs said that the media took no notice of this momentous occasion. Had the groups broken up in disarray it would have been headline news. Obviously, for the moment at least, these well- intentioned efforts have no impact on societal opinion whatsoever.

* Government response

Governments are really betwixt and between. They are anxious to protect minority rights. Consequently they are very guarded as to who is to blame. They are also as tough on vigilante groups who wish to take the law into their own hands and unfairly victimize the innocents. However, the selfsame governments create lists of suspects and areas of possible recruitment that contain mainly Muslims and Muslim organizations or Mosques. They are then attacked for profiling from the left or pandering to political correctness from the right. The administrations have to accept the fact that the majority on those lists maybe Muslim but the majority of Muslims, by far, do not support the radical Islamic Jihadists.

* Jihadists are not lone crazy nuts.

The crisp point is that these Jihadists cannot be created in a vacuum. They are not lone deranged lunatics. They cannot just suddenly emerge with these brutal ideologies. The temptation each and every time is to say that the perpetrator was some – one who was just radicalized on the Internet. That cannot happen. There has to be a sustained brainwashing process. There has to be several steps to making an American citizen board a plane and go to Somalia – a propaganda piece on the internet offering a more fulfilling life would not cut it? There have to be cells and propaganda that prey on potential recruits. No lone UK citizen dreams up this carnage in a vacuum as has been shown in the recent UK bombing.

UNPLEASANT REALITY

So the unpleasant reality has to be faced that out there in the Muslim Community are those that are radicalizing these people. The even more unpleasant reality is that they have to be infiltrated and information gained. Welfare organizations, religious groups, professional groups and other organizations sadly are the pool from where this radicalization takes place. Hopefully, the country has advanced from the outrageous response in the forties where all Japanese citizens are interned.

In order to do root out those radicalizing the youth, support and understanding is needed from the Muslim groups. The latter are not coordinated in their condemnation of these terrorists and the countries that support it. It has to be said the responsibility is on them to do all they can to make it clear that these thugs are threatening their liberty as much as anyone else’s. They really ought to form a group that speaks on behalf of all Muslims in a clear and unequivocal voice.

On a Governmental level those countries that abhor this violence need to unite and condemn the Jihadist activity and countries like Iran who support and foster it.

As a member of a minority group, Judaism, I can identify with my Muslim brethren the fear of being stigmatized by the behavior of others of my group. The Jews of the world were not in a dissimilar situation when the Irgun in Israel perpetrated terrorist activities on the British prior to the establishment of Israel They were condemned by the Jewish leaders in the Zionist movement including Chaim Weizmann, Ben Gurion leader of the Hagannah in Israel and the Palestinian Jewish Agency, who were the de facto Jewish Palestinian Government. In 1944 after the assassination of Lord Moyne, the British Secretary of State, the Jewish Agency assisted in naming names to the British. Teddy Kollek who was subsequently the Mayor of Jerusalem was an agent in this highly unpleasant operation that nearly created a civil war between the Ben Gurion and the Begin factions.

This notwithstanding the fact that there was plenty of root causes for the Irgun terrorist behavior including the fact that the British, contrary to the Balfour Declaration and even the 1939 British White Paper were not allowing the surviving victims of the holocaust entry into Israel.