Why terrorists hate us
By DR WALID PHARES,
academic, adviser to President Bush and author of
Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies Against The West
IN the five years since the terror attacks of 9/11, Walid Phares has
been consistently consulted by high-ranking US officials to explain
who the jihadists are and to help the West prepare for what may
come.
Walid’s study of the phenomenon of jihad – or Islamic struggle – for
more than 25 years has enabled him to translate the intentions,
justifications and goals of the terrorists who are determined to
defeat America and her allies.
Here, he answers critical questions including: Who are the people
who want to destroy the West and why do they want to hurt us?
SINCE September 11 in New York, March 11 in Madrid and July 7 in
London, questions have been forming among a stunned public – why do
these people hate us, who are they and what do they want?
As someone who studied the jihadist movement for a quarter of a
century on three continents, I find the questions indicate a greater
drama — how can societies targeted for a systematic and global
warfare by terrorist forces operating in the open for at least two
decades be asking questions about their identification?
Instead, the Americans, British and Spanish should ask how the
jihadists were able to strike successfully, how long they have been
able to infiltrate democratic societies and who is helping them do
it.
The real question is this — why are most British citizens, let alone
Europeans and Westerners, lost about who the enemy is? How come they
aren’t able to see clearly, and who is blurring their vision and how?
Ironically, the debate about these concepts is raging in the West,
on its university campuses and in its media, but not elsewhere.
Thus it is within Europe and other democracies that the real war of
ideas is happening.
And as I have made the case for years, it is about the public being
able, or enabled by those qualified, to learn about the root causes,
the identity and strategies of the groups claiming jihadism and
acting violently on behalf of this ideology.
SINCE September 11 in New York, March 11 in Madrid and July 7 in
London, questions have been forming among a stunned public – why do
these people hate us, who are they and what do they want?
As someone who studied the jihadist movement for a quarter of a
century on three continents, I find the questions indicate a greater
drama — how can societies targeted for a systematic and global
warfare by terrorist forces operating in the open for at least two
decades be asking questions about their identification?
Instead, the Americans, British and Spanish should ask how the
jihadists were able to strike successfully, how long they have been
able to infiltrate democratic societies and who is helping them do
it.
The real question is this — why are most British citizens, let alone
Europeans and Westerners, lost about who the enemy is? How come they
aren’t able to see clearly, and who is blurring their vision and how?
Ironically, the debate about these concepts is raging in the West,
on its university campuses and in its media, but not elsewhere.
Thus it is within Europe and other democracies that the real war of
ideas is happening.
And as I have made the case for years, it is about the public being
able, or enabled by those qualified, to learn about the root causes,
the identity and strategies of the groups claiming jihadism and
acting violently on behalf of this ideology.
WHAT DO THEY WANT?
THE terrorists who have been conducting suicide attacks, producing
videos calling for violence and recruiting more terrorists among a
radicalised pool of youth are acting on behalf of an old,
sophisticated and totalitarian ideology, with long-range strategic
objectives — jihadism, or al Jihadiya.
These jihadists aren’t born overnight, nor are they an automatic
response to state policies so far as — according to their own texts,
chatrooms, books and ideologues — indoctrinated militants who have
been made to believe that by killing and being killed, they are
fulfilling a higher divine mission.
It is not about British policies so much as Russians, Indians,
Americans, Spaniards, Arabs and all those who do not bow to the
ultimate goal of “the return of the caliphate and its dominance of
humanity”.
These aren’t some Star Wars movie themes but speeches delivered
from Hyde Park to Osama’s hideout.
In short, the jihadists believe in an ideology that wants to reshape
the West’s “evil world”, particularly its most liberal, secular and
democratic dimensions.
The ultimate worst enemies of the jihadists aren’t Bush, Blair and
Putin, but a new generation of Muslims opposed to fundamentalism in
Tehran, Khartoum and beyond. Their war in the West is in fact a tool
to obstruct the rise to freedom for women, minorities and youth in
the Middle East and the Islamic world. Evidence abounds from Morocco
to Afghanistan.
WHO ARE THEY?
THE jihadists borrowed heavily from what they claim is or was
religion, while in fact they created an all-out ideology.
They shielded themselves by filling an immense gap created by the
crushing of liberal Arabs and Muslims at the hands of dictatorships
in the Middle East.
There are two “trees” of jihadism — the Salafists, who want a
renewed caliphate after the fall of the Ottoman Empire.
STRATEGIES AND TACTICS
THE main feature of the jihadists is their amazing ability to
placate the societies — principally democratic — which they target.
Experts in political camouflage and students of both Islamic and
Western institutions, they have carried out a long-term infiltration
of societies on both sides of the Mediterranean using the
appropriate means.
The fundamentalist militants skilfully use the legal protections
provided by liberal democracies to insert themselves within ethnic
communities and use democracies to shield their ideology in a robe
of religion.
Their major success has been to mass “dis-educate” the public, hence
they abuse collective tolerance as they convert their doctrines into
the so-called “political correctness”.
The latter is proportional to the public’s awareness — the fewer
citizens who know about this “ideology”, the more the radicals have
a free ride.
Hence it is crucial for the British and others around the world to
learn as quickly as possible about the real “factory” producing the
bombs.
Not the warehouses themselves, but the set of ideas that ideologues
have been able to implant in the minds of many in this generation
and are about to instill in the next.
In short, Muslim democrats in particular and informed British in
general are the answer to future jihad.
Dr Walid Phares is the author of Future Jihad: Terrorist
Strategies Against The West. He is a visiting scholar at the
European Foundation for Democracy and a Senior Fellow with the
Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
www.futurejihad.com
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2006400521,,00.html
Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies Against The West is published
by Palgrave Macmillan, from £7 at bookshops.
