It's About Damned Time!

Arabs are beginning to grasp the horror of terrorism and more importantly and beginning to look inward for its origins. This from today's Arab News.
"Words are inadequate to express the shock, the revulsion, the outrage at the suicide bombings in Riyadh. Are expatriates working here an army of occupation, to be slaughtered and terrorized into leaving?

This was an undertaking of sheer evil. Life — be it the life of Muslims, of Saudis, of Westerners, of anyone — is sacred, a gift from God. It was targeted as much against Saudi Arabia as against Westerners — not just because Saudis and Westerners alike have been killed and maimed but because the prime aim of those responsible for this despicable crime is to create panic and terror. Those responsible are the new fascists. Merciless, cold and full of hate, with a demented vision of Islam, they declared war on humanity for the thoroughly un-Islamic goal of separating and insulating the Muslim world from the rest of humanity, as part of which they hope to terrorize Westerners into leaving the Kingdom. They have no qualms about killing anyone who gets in their way; they spread hatred and resentment, not peace; yet they have the blasphemous effrontery to claim that they do God’s work. They make a mockery of Islam, an open, inclusive faith."

And, it gets better.

"It goes without saying that those responsible, those who poisoned the minds of the bombers, those who are planning to become bombers, must be tracked down and crushed — remorselessly and utterly. But crushing them will not be enough. The environment that produced such terrorism has to change. The suicide bombers have been encouraged by the venom of anti-Westernism that has seeped through the Middle East’s veins, and the Kingdom is no less affected. Those who gloat over Sept. 11, those who happily support suicide bombings in Israel and Russia, those who consider non-Muslims less human than Muslims and therefore somehow disposable, all bear part of the responsibility for the Riyadh bombs."


Islamic Nations must recognize, not only that terrorism threatens all civilizations, not just those they disapprove of. And, they must recognize that the fermenting hatred that they often condone and encourage is the origin and not Ariel Sharon or Exxon.