Barack Obama, who gives great speeches, gave two clever ones Wednesday and Thursday in Washington — the first at the counterterrorism gathering of religious and civil society groups, and the other at the 60-nation summit of ministers responsible for security. He laid down some great principles but his central ones bore little resemblance to reality. He repeatedly called for honest dialogue but he wasn’t fully honest himself.
He started with the standard line of those waging war against terrorists. “We are
not at war with Islam — we are at war with the people who have perverted Islam.” Leaders of Al Qaeda and Islamic State are not religious personages but terrorists. “They no more represent Islam than any mad man who kills innocents in the name of God represents Christianity or Judaism or Buddhism or Hinduism. No religion is responsible for terrorism. People are responsible for violence and terrorism.”
Islam, in fact, prohibits terrorism — “the Qur’an says whoever kills an innocent, it is as if he has killed all mankind.”
He cited terrorist outrages committed by non-Muslims — the 1995 Oklahoma bombing, the 2012 attack on a Sikh temple near Milwaukee and the recent murder of three young Muslims in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
He was challenging the central tenet of Islamophobes that terrorism is all about Islam.
He avoided such terms as “Islamic radicals,” “Islamic extremism” or even “Muslim extremism” — in sharp contrast to Stephen Harper’s unrelenting drumbeat against “jihadists,” “jihadism,” “jihadi terrorism,” “violent jihadism,” etc., a war cry dutifully recited by Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney in Washington.
Obama also noted that terrorism is not new and that it does not constitute an existentialist threat, unlike what George W. Bush used to say or what Harper is saying.
But, then, Obama got disingenuous.
While Muslims abhor the fanaticism of the Islamic State and reject violence, many do “buy into” the notion that Islam “has been polluted by western values.”
No, that’s not what Muslims have mainly bought into but rather the reality that the U.S. and its allies have been waging both hot and cold wars on Muslim nations and peoples, prior to and after Sept. 11, 2001, and occupying Muslim lands, including Palestinians’.
This is the central grievance that has been used by terrorists to recruit vulnerable young people, including more than 3,000 from Europe and North America.
This is what western intelligence agencies have been telling their government for years.
This is what the lone wolf terrorists have been saying — in blogs and videos and at their trials. The two charged with plotting to derail a Via passenger train said they were prepared to kill women and children here because non-Muslims were “killing women and children in our land.” The B.C. couple, “Al Qaeda Canada,” who allegedly planned to attack the legislature in Victoria, wanted to avenge what they saw as the tyranny inflicted on Muslims abroad.
Nary a mention of this from Obama. Instead, he — like others — are feeding us a plethora of alternate explanations, some no doubt relevant but only tangentially.
Obama, however, did well to defy those who do not wish to talk about the root causes of terrorism — something that Justin Trudeau did at one time, only to be scoffed at by Harper.
“Poverty alone does not cause a person to become a terrorist . . . Billions of people live in abject poverty and never embrace violent ideologies. Conversely, there are terrorists who’ve come from extraordinarily wealthy backgrounds, like Osama bin Laden.
“What’s true, though, is that when millions of people, especially youth, are impoverished and have no hope for the future, when corruption inflicts daily humiliations on people, when there are no outlets by which people can express their concerns, resentments fester . . . And terrorist groups are all too happy to step into a void.”
So, we must promote development and growth, not just wage war.
Terrorists also exploit political grievances. “When governments oppress their people, deny human rights, stifle dissent . . . it sows the seeds of extremism and violence. It makes those communities more vulnerable to recruitment.
“So the essential ingredient to real and lasting stability and progress is not less democracy; it’s more democracy.”
Well said — except that America and its western allies, including Canada, continue to embrace the non-democratic oppressive regimes in the Muslim world against whom many Muslims rebelled. But the Arab Spring was crushed by America’s allies, with Obama’s implicit and Harper’s explicit endorsement.
Representatives of those regimes were in the audience Obama was speaking to: Egypt, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Obama called for an end to the stigmatization and profiling of Muslims.
“We have to make sure that we do not stigmatize entire communities. Nobody should be profiled or put under a cloud of suspicion simply because of their faith. Engagement with communities can’t be a cover for surveillance. We can’t ‘securitize’ our relationship with Muslim Americans dealing with them solely through the prism of law enforcement.”
Yet that’s precisely what happened in the U.S. immediately after Sept. 11 and has continued under his watch.
Still, some of his points are relevant to Canada, especially this:
We can’t be calling for the co-operation of Muslim fellow-citizens in the fight against terrorism while constantly denigrating them and stigmatizing their religion. “When people spew hatred toward others because of their faith or because they are immigrants, it feeds into terrorist narratives. It feeds a cycle of fear and resentment and a sense of injustice upon which extremists prey. And we can’t allow cycles of suspicion to tear the fabrics of our countries.”
The Harperites, on the other hand, actively woo Islamophobes as well as divide Canadians as part of their electoral strategy.
Haroon Siddiqui’s column appears on Thursday and Sunday. hsiddiqui@thestar.ca
