Terrorism: Fighting Hatred with Forgiveness

|TOP|One week after the foiled terrorist plot in England and scenes of chaos continue to be a familiar sight in several British airports.

Terrorists, aiming to commit “mass murder on an unimaginable scale” were thwarted last week, according to Scotland Yard. They had planned to detonate explosive devices smuggled in hand luggage on to as many as 10 aircraft.

As the plot reveals Britain's struggle to contain Muslim extremism, a more worrying trend has emerged that reveals the threat reaches out across Europe.

Following the discovery of the terrorist plot, the Archbishop of York, the Most Rev John Sentamu, said he believes that disenfranchised young Muslims turn to extremism not because of Islam, but “because they are alienated, because they have been given a vision which is so imaginatively wicked”.

A large surge in radical Islam has revealed a tiny but dangerous minority of people who testify they are followers of the Muslim faith and who are explaining their actions by stating they have been called to respond to Jihad.

The observation is not new that from west to east Europe a number of dissatisfied Muslims living in poorer areas are being targeted by mainstream fanatics looking for new recruits to join them as foot soldiers in the “holy war”.

Counter-terrorist police across Europe have warned that the worrying trend is not just isolated to a few major cities across Europe but that the problem has is much more deeply rooted than that.

Since the 7/7 bombings in London last year, the shocking image of “homegrown” militants with a commission to wreak havoc among innocent civilian populations has been an increasing concern.

|QUOTE|And the threat, it seems, has not been alleviated by the endless attempts at interreligious dialogue evident since the 2004 train bombings in Madrid, and even since the 9/11 attacks in the US.

Fawaz Gerges, a professor of Islamic studies at Sarah Lawrence College in New York stated in an Associated Press report: “Their numbers are still relatively small, but I fear they could become larger as more young Muslims embrace militancy.”

Gerges reported that it is entirely appropriate to describe the extremists as ‘the Jihad generation’ - converts to extremism in Britain, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Scandinavia and elsewhere who are becoming radicalised, with many stating that it is a response to the conflicts in Afghanistan and the Middle East.

Whatever people’s thoughts are on this, one thing that is certain is that this ‘Jihad Generation’ is spawning self-generating networks and cells, which if continue to grow at their present rate, will be almost impossible for the security agencies to contain in the future.

Gerges also points out: “They're not part of al-Qaeda, but in their own eyes, they are foot soldiers” who share Osama bin Laden's ideology.

The core of the problem remains: very little is known of what may have motivated the 23 suspects in British police custody to become involved with an alleged plot to blow up jetliners scheduled to fly to the US; no-one knows precisely why the London transport bombers decided to take their own lives to murder scores of others, who whichever way it is viewed, were simply travelling and fulfilling the daily duties of their lives.

A number of residents in the middle and working class neighbourhoods that were home to the latest terrorist suspects have said the communities have become alienated by U.S. and British policy in the Middle East.

Azzam Tamimi, director of the London-based Institute of Islamic Political Thought explained: “Governments in Europe insist this is a problem of ideology, but the real cause of this phenomenon is the political crisis that is sweeping the world with the war in Iraq and the situation in Palestine.”

|AD|Of course, very few would say that this was an excuse for the hatred and murder witnessed by acts of terror, even if it were a result of foreign policies in western countries.

Pierre de Bousquet de Florian, head of France's counterterrorism agency, reported that recruiters for hardline Islamist groups can turn some Muslim youths with little interest in religion into extremists in a matter of weeks.

According to a 2005 police intelligence report, around 5,000 French Muslims embrace extremist Islam. France is home to about 5 million Muslims, the largest Islamic community in western Europe, and French authorities have already revealed they cracked down on several terrorist cells in 2006 already.

"Young people who are indifferent to religion fall in a matter of weeks into the toughest kind of Islam and, almost without any transition, into the most worrisome kind of activism," Bousquet de Florian told the newspaper Le Parisien last month.

It is the dramatic increase in homegrown extremists who seem to be operating in small, tight circles that has caused the most concern. The difficulty in particular for law enforcement agencies to penetrate these groups is evidenced by the fact that this new generation of terrorists has so completely stumped counterterrorism efforts in so many countries.

Holland has been on high alert since a Dutch Muslim of Moroccan descent murdered filmmaker Theo van Gogh in 2004, authorities in Spain have been monitoring some 250 suspected Islamic radicals, and in Bosnia five men are on trial for allegedly plotting an attack on an unidentified European country — significantly, one with troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In an open letter released this weekend by prominent British Islamic groups, it was stated that Britain has been made a target as a result of the “debacle in Iraq” and the failure to quickly secure a ceasefire in southern Lebanon as Israel waged a military campaign against Hezbollah.

So what is the truth behind the new wave of terror? Is it Blair, Bush and their Middle East policies? Is it down to Islam and, as a few commentators have claimed, a lack of responsibility offered on the part of Islamic leaders? Is it as the Archbishop of York has stated – the alienation of young Muslims? Is it all of the above or even none of the above? What is certain is that there can be no excuse for the actions taken by the terrorists.

Some commentators argue that the foreign policies of Bush and Blair make them the real terrorists as if that excuses the terrorist bombing campaigns and random mass killing of civilians as targets. It doesn’t.

The wisdom for building peaceful relations on the national and international levels, between one group and another group of people, is that they cannot be maintained by such lawful, ‘eye-for-an-eye’ relationships. Rather, the core pillars that society must be built upon are patience and harmony through the demonstration of a greater love, a love that looks beyond the differences to the commonalities – our humanity, the God-given ability of every individual to love like no other creation.

The amazing strength of Gee Walker, mother of murdered teenager Anthony Walker, reveals the love that we all must strive for – offering generous forgiveness even when faced with the horror of losing someone we consider more precious than our own lives.

In the face of hatred, in the midst of losing the one thing that mattered most in her life, Gee Walker testified the forgiveness she had received through her faith in Jesus Christ. This is all she, in turn, had to offer her son’s killers.

She stated simply: “His life is going to make a change”.

Mrs Walker does not know why they young men now behind bars killed her innocent son, beyond the explanation that it was an attack rooted in hatred. In a similar way, we also do not know for certain the real reason why people change from apparently law-abiding citizens into unrecognisable images so far removed from the image of generous love, and commit such heinous crimes against society.

The hatred spreading among terrorists and extremists is global in reach as such pockets of homegrown terrorists continue to crop up not just in the UK or Europe. With the problem so far-reaching, surely it is now time to focus on what can be done to reveal universally held values that bring about the beautiful life that everyone is looking for, be it Bush, Blair, an innocent civilian, or indeed a young Muslim being primed for terrorism,.

Common values built upon respect and love must be promoted above all things and laid down as a foundation upon which a lasting reconciliation can be built. This is the hope we must all retain and work in unity towards.