Combating terrorism must include religious reform, which cannot take place in
absence of comprehensive political reform
The Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies (CIHRS) condemns the terrorist acts that shook the French capital city, Paris last week, and which took the lives of 12 people at the Charlie Hebdo newspaper, and four others in a hostage incident at a Kosher supermarket. While the Cairo Institute offers its sincere condolences and expresses solidarity with the families of the victims of those terrorist acts, it also calls upon Arab governments and the international community to develop a long-term strategy, which takes into consideration the factors that foster terrorism in the Arab region.
Specifically, it calls for a consideration of the systematic oppression of authoritarian regimes, which pushes both secular and Islamist youth towards political extremism, and the extremist religious discourse that in turn religious educational curricula and official religious institutions adopt. A consideration of the failure to execute the United Nations resolutions on the Palestinian cause is also a key factor that creates a fertile environment for the rise of extremism.
The ongoing and decades-long failure to fight religious-based terrorism is, therefore, a result of the current strategy, which has done nothing but increase terrorism around the world.
Last Wednesday, January 7, 2015, an unprecedented terrorist attack took place against the French press, when gunmen attacked the Charlie Hebdo offices and killed twelve journalists and two police officers, including the Editor in Chief and four senior caricaturists. It is suspected that the attack was executed by Islamist extremists, who were politically and militarily trained in Arab countries, in response to a caricature published by the magazine, which they considered as blasphemous.
The Cairo Institute condemns this unjustifiable criminal act, and considers it a crime against freedom of opinion, expression and the press in France and worldwide. In this sense, it denounces the attempts of some Egyptian media outlets to justify the incident under the pretext that Charlie Hebdo offended religions and the Prophet.
These media outlets, whether publicly or privately owned, follow the same apologist approach of blindly supporting the Egyptian government. They attack opinions that criticize human rights violations committed by the Egyptian security apparatus in its fight against terrorism or in its suppression of any Islamist or secular critical voices.
The Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies urges the international community to view the Paris attacks not within a vacuum, but within the broader historical context of the emergence and development of Islamist-based terrorist movements. Religious extremism thrives only in atmospheres of oppression, lack of democracy, and repression of the right to express political, economic and social disappointments, It also thrives within contexts in which there is a dominant extremist religious discourse, supported and propagated by governmental religious educational curricula and by official religious institutions.
The oppressive atmospheres of many Arab countries is sustained with the backing of world powers, who believe that authoritarian regimes can promote stability and counter terrorism. This much sort-after stabiliy, however, will be, like in the past, short-lived. Rather, the support of authoritarian regimes is a long-term investment in encouraging the growth of terrorism.
In the 14 years of the war against terror in the wake of the September 11 attacks, it is clear that terrorism cannot be combated without a radical and comprehensive process of religious reform. Decades of authoritarianism and autocracy has showed, however, that the process of religious reform cannot be initiated unless there is comprehensive political reform first. We have indeed seen that extremist religious discourse is a source of legitimacy for many of these regimes.
Ray Hanania is an award winning political and humor columnist who analyzes American and Middle East politics, and life in general. He is an author of several books.
Hanania covered Chicago Politics and Chicago City Hall from 1976 through 1992 at the Daily Southtown and the Chicago Sun-Times. He began writing in 1975 publishing The Middle Eastern Voice newspaper in Chicago (1975-1977). He later published “The National Arab American Times” newspaper (2004-2007).
Hanania writes weekly columns on Middle East and American Arab issues as Special US Correspondent for the Arab News ArabNews.com, at TheArabDailyNews.com, and at SuburbanChicagoland.com. He has published weekly columns in the Jerusalem Post newspaper, YNetNews.com, Newsday, the Orlando Sentinel, Houston Chronical, and Arlington Heights Daily Herald.
Hanania is the recipient of four (4) Chicago Headline Club “Peter Lisagor Awards” for Column writing. In November 2006, he was named “Best Ethnic American Columnist” by the New American Media. In 2009, Hanania received the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi Award for Writing from the Society of Professional Journalists. He is the recipient of the MT Mehdi Courage in Journalism Award. He was honored for his writing skills with two (2) Chicago Stick-o-Type awards from the Chicago Newspaper Guild. In 1990, Hanania was nominated by the Chicago Sun-Times editors for a Pulitzer Prize for his four-part series on the Palestinian Intifada.
His writings have also been honored by two national Awards from ADC for his writing, and from the National Arab American Journalists Association.
Hanania is the US Special Correspondent for the Arab News Newspaper, covering Middle East and Arab American issues. He writes for the Southwest News newspaper group writing on mainstream American issues.
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