The Causes of Global Terrorism

The Causes of Global Terrorism

Terrorism, Terrorism, Al Qaeda, Osama Bin laden, Terrorism, 9/11, Terrorism, Al Qaeda, Jihad, Terrorism, 9/11, Taliban, Islamic extremist, Terrorism. How do you feel now? Do you feel different than before you read the first sentence of this paper? Are you scared? Are you concerned? Or maybe you are an intelligent person and you are mad that I would have the audacity to make fun of these critically important issues and devastating events of our recent history and current events. This essay is geared toward identifying the root causes of global terrorism. Have you ever been so scared that it doesn’t matter to you how that fear is overcome or destroyed that you will trust the first person that says they can help? And once that fear is alleviated would you ever go back and think that maybe the person who offered to help you was actually the person who was scaring you in the first place? Upon deconstruction of the word terrorism and the events that led up to its prevalence in contemporary western society we can say that this word is just a rouse used to manipulate the public into fearing the unknown and forfeiting their power within democratic society, allowing the secret, illegal and criminal agendas of their governments to continue without the threat of sanction or revolution.

As westerners when we think of terrorism we most often think of the September 11th, 2001 collapse of the twin towers. When we think of this and other events labelled as terrorism we see them simply as unjust random actions who’s only purpose is to cause terror, panic, insecurity and fear in the public and government of a nation instead of a justified fight for independence, liberation, struggle, jihad, or revolution.1 As President Bush so ignorantly stated after the events of September 11th “They hate our freedoms,”2 instead of saying the real reason behind what would inspire such actions from foreign nations. If the attacks on the World Trade Center buildings were actually committed by a foreign nation or group they would have symbolized something like global capitalism under American leadership,3 and that is something the majority of the world would justly and rightly fight against. The label of terrorism often leads to the disfiguring of genuine causes for liberation4 and if we were to remove those genuine causes for liberation from the list of terrorist acts committed in the world there would only be one group left on the list of, The United States Government.

The main cause of global terrorism in the public eye of the west is the religion of Islam, we are told that Islam encourages terrorism, that the Koran is filled with exhortations to fight and kill infidels, and that jihad is an armed struggle against unbelievers, with the ultimate goal being the establishment of a wholly Muslim world.5 The truth is people of the west know nothing of Islam, we have been conditioned by the government and the media so forcefully that the first thing that comes to mind when the word Islam is spoken is terrorism, images of the twin towers falling flashing in our minds every time we see a person of Arab decent at an airport, thousands of Arab people racially profiled, arrested, and detained without evidence. Islam in most cases is a very peaceful religion much like Christianity in its beliefs and structure, the words of the Koran and the idea of Jihad call for peace and not violence,6 but distorted by Islamic extremists such as Ayman Zawahiri and Osama Bin laden as well as the western media it can become a deadly weapon of control and hatred. These few cases of unjustified Islamic extremist attacks on human life are what people focus on when thinking of terrorism and almost all Muslim and Arab people become unjustly stereotyped. Terrorism and Jihad are not identical twins but historical enemies, terrorism is not only un-Islamic but anti-Islamic and those who commit terrorism should be designated as criminals rather than as holy warriors or resistance fighters.7

To understand more about Islamic fundamentalism and why in most cases it should not be considered terrorism let’s look back in history to where it all began. The very first Islamic extremist was named Sayed Kotb, he was a teacher originally from Egypt. Sent to the United States of America to study its educational system in 1949 he was disgusted by American culture, its crassness, corruption, vulgarity, and materialism, he saw that people lusted after material goods and were trapped by their own selfish and greedy desires. He returned to Egypt in the early 1950’s and upon his return he became politically active because he saw that American culture had begun to spread in Egypt, he saw Islam as political ideology as a way to stop this. He joined a brotherhood who shared his vision of an Islamic government. In 1954 Kutb was arrested for plotting to overthrow the government. He was sentenced to time in prison and during that time he wrote books about how and why to overthrow the current government in favour of an Islamic state. During his sentence he was brutally and inhumanly tortured and upon his release he continued to plot a government overthrow. In 1966 he was arrested again and put on trial for treason. He was executed on August 29th 1966. Sayed Kotb was the first person to suggest that if a Muslim politician rejected the Qur'an he could no longer be called a Muslim and could justifiably be killed. This theme has been used by Islamic revolutionaries since it was written by Sayed Kutb in the 1960’s.8

The day after Kutb’s execution a young doctor named Ayman Zawahiri started a new revolutionary group using Kutb’s teachings. Zawahiri’s ideas spread rapidly due to the corruption of the government of President Anwar El Sadat. In 1977 Sadat introduced his open door policy and many large foreign businesses began to flood to Egypt. This policy was viewed as treason by many of the revolutionary groups because it allowed large foreign business like banks to hold major power in the Egyptian economy. President Sadat was assassinated in 1981. The assassins were arrested and executed, and Ayman Zawahiri and nearly 300 other members of Islamic Jihad were also arrested and tried for conspiracy to commit treason. Zawahiri was sentenced to three years in prison and like Kutb he was brutally tortured. After the assassination of Sadat the people failed to rise up against the corrupt political system and the country continued to be controlled by the same political regime. Zawahiri’s beliefs about society started to change and he not only held the corrupt politicians responsible for going against Islam but the regular people for supporting the politicians. He as well as many other revolutionary leaders now believed that everyone not fighting for an Islamic revolution could justifiably be killed.9

In 1985 during Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan many Arab countries including Egypt emptied their prisons of criminals and sent them to Afghanistan to help fight against the Russians in hopes that most of them would be killed. Ayman Zawahiri was one of these criminals. Afghanistan was where Zawahiri met Osama Bin laden but after the war ended they went their separate ways. During the late 80’s political violence was only getting worse, Islamic revolution seemed inevitable. Despite all of the violence associated with Islamic fundamentalism, revolutionary political parties were beginning to win elections and by 1991 in Egypt and Algeria fundamentalists were about to legally win in both national elections. This would have meant that there would no longer be democracy in either country, Islam being the law there would no longer be any need for political parties or votes. The military leaders in both countries saw this coming and they took over parliament and in June 1991 they cancelled the elections. There were riots for days and hundreds of people were killed, injured and arrested. The Islamic revolution had failed and the same political regime that they had been fighting against for over 20 years was still in power. Many of the revolutionary groups disband and the ones that were left intact were very angry.10

During the 90’s Arab nations were torn apart by Islamic revolutionary violence. Thousands of innocent people were murdered because according to fundamentalist groups they were rejecting the Qur’an and were no longer Muslims. By this time in the early 90’s Osama Bin laden and Ayman Zawahiri were back together, living in a base in Sudan they were the leaders of a group of fundamentalists and they were the main advisors to many others. They were responsible for many of the criminal acts carried out against civilians and politicians in this time period. In 1997, after 58 tourists were murdered at the ruins of Luxor the people had had enough of the violence that fundamentalism brought to their communities. Mass protests against fundamentalism with hundreds of thousands of people were held and the majority of the leaders of fundamentalist groups were coerced into signed a cease-fire agreement with the government. Most of these groups disband and the only fundamentalists left were very small groups who no longer had any power or influence.11

In May of 1998 after fleeing the country Ayman Zawahiri and Osama Bin laden announced a new Jihad in Afghanistan but were very unsuccessful. Their goal was no longer to worry about political reform in Arab nations but to attack the outside sources of corruption. In August 1998 they organized 2 suicide bombings at the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killing over 200 people. Before they could accomplish their goals of attacking The United States directly the U.S. government got their hands on a video tape of Bin laden and Zawahiri stating their global terror agenda and after the collapse of the World Trade Center towers Bin laden and Zawahiri were blamed, forced into hiding and never seen again. As for the attacks on September the 11th, there is no evidence directly linking Bin laden or Zawahiri to that operation accept that it was funded in part by Binladen.12

Before the events of September 11th the term Al Qaeda was never spoken, it was a name invented by the U.S. government and since then has been used to describe any radical Islamic group or Taliban member inside Afghanistan. The American government portrayed Al Qaeda as being a multi-national terrorist network with sleeper cells in more than 60 countries around the world with unlimited funding and access to nuclear technology. After years of investigating and billions of dollars spent it was found that Al Qaeda as the network the government portrayed it to be did not nor did it ever exist. 664 people were arrested under the terrorism act outside of the Arab nations and not one person was convicted of having ties with Al Qaeda. The majority of Taliban members and Muslims killed and arrested in Afghanistan had nothing to do with Al Qaeda and were simply fighting their own revolutionary fight in their own country.13

To call many of the actions of Islamist revolutionary groups terrorist actions would be harsh and to say that Islam is a cause of global terrorism would simply be a lie. They were just people fighting for a revolution for what they believed to be the betterment of their society. According to what they believed in, they were doing the right thing and at one point they had a majority of people who agreed with them. John Stuart Mill said that if good is to come of evil it must be practiced with an awareness of the need to curtail its general tendency to produce even more evil.14 They were using evil means to achieve a good ends but after over 30 years of doing this the bad outweighed the good and they were forced to stop. Islamic fundamentalism was never a threat to any country outside of the Arab nations and is no longer a major threat inside them. There are still small terrorist groups around the world and terrorism still happens, but to link any of it directly to Islam wouldn’t be right. Terrorist groups terrorize for many reasons and most of those reasons are unknown to us and are not connected with each other. Osama Bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri belong to one small group of terrorists that hold extreme ideals unique to their group and they do not represent any larger portion of Islamic revolutionaries.

Many would never think of actions done on their own or governments behalf to be terrorist, the terrorist, somehow is always the other.15 The U.S. is a clear instance of this. While many of its politicians condemn any political violence against U.S. targets as being “terrorist” and “criminal” actions, not worthy of moral respect, the U.S. has sponsored, through its CIA, various terrorist activities, including attempted assassinations, covert wars, etc. Furthermore, the U.S. was in part founded on terrorism, for the Boston Tea Party, and some other non-conventional techniques of warfare against the British military by the colonists amounted to terrorism.16 The United States is responsible for numerous acts of terrorism, the federal government has a long history of supporting terrorism in Afghanistan and Israel. The United States has not only abetted terrorists but also committed its own attacks, including bombings in Lebanon and Sudan.17

The biggest terrorist act committed by the government of the United States of America was committed against its own country and its own citizens. Nearly 3000 were killed when supposed airplane hijackers sent 2 jets into the sides of the World Trade Center buildings on September 11th, 2001.18 Truth be told Afghanistan only played a small part in these attacks, all three buildings: World Trade Center 1, World Trade Center 2, and World Trade Center 7 were all brought down in a controlled demolition using explosives that were planted there before the planes hit the buildings.19 This gave way to the illegitimate occupation of Afghanistan where 8,587 Afghani Troops and 8,309 civilians were murdered and are still being murdered by American and Coalition forces.20

With the American people terrorised and still believing that Afghanistan and Osama Bin laden were responsible for the World Trade Center terrorist attacks they were reluctant to stop the war crazed President Bush from illegitimately invading Iraq. Bush lied to everyone in the world when trying to gain approval for the Iraq war, saying that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction and is planning to use them on the United States of America and that Hussein has extensive ties with Al Qaeda, since then both have been proven to be entirely false.21,22 Only 1 year after the invasion of Iraq it in 2004 it was proven that there were no weapons of mass destruction and that the extensive ties between Bin laden and Saddam Hussein were simply lies conjured by the American Federal government.21,22 Upon this discovery America did not withdraw its forces from Iraq but it has spent the last 6 years continuing to conquer and kill Iraqi troops and civilians. In 2006 the Iraqi death toll was over 650,000 and now is suspected to be over 850,000 around 70% of which were innocent Iraqi civilians.20,23

George W. Bush and Barrack Obama’s War on Terror should more accurately be called War of Terror. Nearly 1 million people have died in this War of Terror and realistically, no end is in sight.20 This amount of illegitimate, unethical, criminal murders is rivalled only by Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. Nobody will rise up and unite against the superpower of American terror and the American army so until they do we are forced to sit here and watch as hundreds of thousands and possibly millions of people die for nothing.

We can only speculate the agenda of the American government; they must be getting something out of all this murder and corruption. Trillions of dollars have been spent on these wars and the American public as well as the rest of the world have been left to wonder what they are still doing occupying these countries. Even a major economic recession did not stop them from continuing to destroy these countries and murder their citizens. It has been nearly ten years of war and we are lead to believe that they have nothing to show for it. Thousands of dead American soldiers, Osama Bin laden still on the run and Iraq is still in a state of complete disarray. What did they go there for? Why are they still there? And what are they getting out of all of this? Are not questions we would be asking if this war were a legitimate one. They invented the phantom enemy of Al Qaeda and the threat of Islam, they murdered nearly 3 thousand of their own citizens as well as almost 1 million others in order to achieve their own secret, illegal, and criminal goals.20 The United States government is the Axis of evil in the world and the main cause of global terrorism. “Good and evil are present in this world, and between the two of them there can be no compromise. Murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere. Freeing people from oppression and despair is eternally right. This nation must continue to speak out for justice and truth. We must always be willing to act in their defense – and to advance the cause of peace.” – George W. Bush24

Work Cited:
1) Nassar, Jamal R. Globalization and Terrorism The Migration of Dreams and Nightmares, (Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2005) pg. 16
2) Suite101.com, Gamso, Jonas, “Why They Hate Us And How it's Hurting Us” Aug 5, 2007, http://internationalaffairs.suite101.com/article.cfm/why_they_hate_us
3) Nassar, Jamal R. Globalization and Terrorism The Migration of Dreams and Nightmares, (Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2005) pg. 19
4) ibid, pg. 18
5) Egendorf, Laura K. Terrorism Opposing Viewpoints, (Michigan: Greenhaven Press, 2004) pg.70 - Warraq, Ibn, “Understanding Islam and the Qur’an: A Critique of Islam and the Qur’an,” American Atheist, vol. 40, Summer 2002, p.35
6) Egendorf, Laura K. Terrorism Opposing Viewpoints, (Michigan: Greenhaven Press, 2004) pg.79 - Sullivan, Anthony T. “New Frontiers in the Ecumenical Jihad Against Terrorism: Terrorism, Jihad, and the Struggle for New Understandings,” American Muslim. Feb 2003.
7) ibid, pg.80
8) BBC, BBC Documentary, The Power of Nightmares: Baby its cold outside, Aired Tuesday, 18 January, 2005, 2320 GMT on BBC Two
9) BBC, BBC Documentary, The Power of Nightmares: The Phantom Victory, Aired Wednesday, 19 January, 2005, 2320 GMT on BBC Two
10) ibid
11) ibid
12) ibid
13) BBC, BBC Documentary, The Power of Nightmares: The Shadows in the Cave, Aired Thursday, 20 January, 2005, 2320 GMT on BBC Two
14) Corlett, J. Angelo, Terrorism a Philosophical Analysis, (Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. 2003) pg. 51 – Geraint Williams, “J.S. Mill and Political Violence,” Utilitas, 1 (1989) pg. 103
15) Nassar, Jamal R. Globalization and Terrorism The Migration of Dreams and Nightmares, (Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2005) pg. 15
16) Corlett, J. Angelo, Terrorism a Philosophical Analysis, (Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. 2003) pg. 48
17) Egendorf, Laura K. Terrorism Opposing Viewpoints, (Michigan: Greenhaven Press, 2004) pg. 43 – Noam Chomsky, interviewed by David Barsamian, “The United States is a Leading Terrorist State,” Monthly Review, vol. 53, November 2001, MR Press, 1993.
18) CNN, Phil Hirschkorn, “New York reduces 9/11 death toll by 40,” October 29, 2003 http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/Northeast/10/29/wtc.deaths/
19) Niels H. Harrit, Jeffrey Farrer, Steven E. Jones, Kevin R. Ryan, Frank M. Legge, Daniel Farnsworth, Gregg Roberts, James R. Gourley, Bradley R. Larsen, “The Open Chemical Physics Journal,” Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe, 2009, 2, 7-31.
http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOCPJ/2009/00000002/00000001/7TOCPJ.SGM
20) UnknownNews.net, “At least 869,720 people have been killed in Afghanistan and Iraq since the U.S. and coalition attacks, based on lowest credible estimates.” February 16, 2010.
http://www.unknownnews.net/casualties.html#fn3
21) Washington Post, Walter Pincus, Dana Milbank, “Al Qaeda-Hussein Link Is Dismissed,” June 17, 2004, Page A01
22) CNN, “Report: No WMD stockpiles in Iraq, “October 7, 2004, http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/06/iraq.wmd.report/
23) CNN, “Study: War blamed for 655,000 Iraqi deaths,” October 11, 2006, http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/10/11/iraq.deaths/
24) The Independent Commentators, “George W Bush: There can be no compromise between good and evil in this world,” January 19, 2009, http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/george-w-bush-there-can-be-no-compromise-between-good-and-evil-in-this-world-1419300.html