The West and United States cannot eliminate Islamic terrorism. Only Muslims can win the war on Islamic terrorism by fighting it on their own. In the end only Muslims can decide what their faith is really all about, and it is Muslims who have to decide whether to fight against the terror groups who use the name of Islam or to join them. The United States and the West can covertly support Muslims who fight against the Islamic terrorism. America can’t lead the war on terror nor can it win it. Arabs and other Muslims generally agree that Assad might be a bloody tyrant, but on the grounds that many Muslims believe, the invasion was a family affair to be solved within the family and not by America or the West who intervened in the name of human rights and international justice; they also believe the invasion was wrong because they are just protecting their own self interests and maintaining Muslim subordination to the Christians’ belief. Defeating Islamic terrorism needs more than fake bravado. It needs a deeper understanding of what must done beyond the understanding of President Obama and Prime Minister Cameron, who cannot tell who is Muslim or who is not when sending F-16s to bomb and kill them.
The Islamic terrorism can be eliminated only if Muslim people consistently decide to fight against them. This is not the case with the alleged creation of a coalition of Muslim Nations States against Islamic terrorism. When President Obama finally decided to destroy the Islamic State, it reminded me of what President Bush said after 9/11 about Al Qaeda. It is true that U.S forces did kill thousands of Al Qaeda members, but Al Qaeda is very much around. It is naïve to think that destroying the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria will solve the problem, because the problem is the ideology that reproduces it. This ideology will not be eliminated even if the United States and the West get rid of the Islamic State in those two countries. What happened when the United States killed Osama Bin Ladin? The Islamic State formed, Abu Bakr al Baghdadi appeared, so that if the Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi were killed or the Islamic State eliminated, another person would lead yet another Islamic entity and attract many Muslims from around the globe to join them.
Let’s be honest to ourselves. The majority of Muslims believe that Islam is the true religion and that Judaism and Christianity are false religions. The belief that Islam will rule the world is shared by many millions of Muslims. That’s why some of the Jihadists, like the Islamic State, legitimize the Jihad as a tool for achieving Islamic supremacy over the world. This is not war against a state or an organization that will be defeated once the its military might is destroyed. Instead, the world is battling an ideology. Many Muslim countries and Islamic scholars only issue the statement claiming that Islam is a religion of peace and that those of Al Qaeda and the Islamic State are bringing dishonor to Islam. Why can’t Muslim scholars declare fatwa on the Islamic State or Al-Qaida, Boko Haram, or other radicals to kill them if they are the minority who is hijacking Islam? Saudi Arabia does not want the Islamic State to be eliminated, because they are afraid that Iran will be much more powerful since there are more than three million Shiite Muslims living in Saudi Arabia. The same is true in Qatar, because Qatar has supported those Jihadists for a long time for the sake of saving themselves, and Qatar could become the next target. Furthermore, Turkey has been aiding Syrian rebels fighting against Assad since 2011.
The coalition against the war on Islamic terror is largely a Christian coalition with some unwilling participation by Muslims countries. Only Muslims countries can eliminate the Islamic terror, but most of them are aiding it. Why can’t Prime Minister Cameron and President Obama understand that all theocratic regimes tend to devour their own more than their enemy. The Islamic State killed more Muslims than Christians and Jews. After the beheading of a British citizen, British Prime Minister David Cameron said those who did the beheading are not Muslims and that they are monsters. It is true those who committed those act of evil cannot be human beings. But why can’t Muslims fight against those who commit terrorism in the name of Islam? What can be worse than that? I don’t believe spending billions of tax paying money bombing the Jihadists will eliminate the Islamic terrorists, nor will sweetly appeasing talks from Muslim scholars, leaders, or non-Muslims scholars and leaders do any good. The Western leaders only talk with a false sympathy in front of their Muslims to please Muslims countries; in the same way, Muslims leaders only talk false sympathy in front of Westerns to please the Westerners. But inside behind the door they all proclaim a different view than what they said publically. That’s why Islamic terrorism cant be eliminated; instead, only if its true roots are identified can it be abolished.
Dr. Aland Mizell is President of the MCI and a regular contributor to Mindanao Times. You may email the author at:aland_mizell2@hotmail.com