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News and Views About the United States
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By Tahar ben Jelloun
August 10, 2005
Liberation
- Original Article (French) 
The terrorist acts that struck Sharm El-Sheikh were an immense humiliation
to Arab culture and hospitality. It is a bloody insult for the Egyptian people
and a catastrophe for the country’s economy, which has long been confronted
with serious difficulties. It is not the first time that
But whether it’s in London or in Sharm El-Sheikh, the effect of bombs placed in a car or in the backpack of a suicide bomber incites upheaval and panic in the world. Everyone says to himself: that man whose limbs are being gathered up could have been mine, could have been my son or my brother. That woman who’s screaming in pain could have been my wife or my sister. That Italian father who will never find his son in the room where he left him just minutes before the explosion, that man ravaged by pain, could have been any one of us. That young survivor of a dance club bombing, just a youth on vacation, has eyes that burn with death.
Terrorism likes to kill anonymously because the impact on the survivors is greater. If, for example, a barracks or a military convoy is attacked, the average citizen says to himself: they are killing people with high-risk jobs. But now they are massacring passersby and vacationers without distinction, while striking at peoples’ imaginations.
Each time terrorism rears its head, a
question arises: what can be done to stop this? In two weeks it hit London and then
Condemnatory, indignant speeches [by Western
leaders] have become ineffective rituals. Terrorists play on surprise and symbols.
The fact that they chose
Let us not forget that radical Islamism
was born there in 1928 with the formation of the Muslim Brotherhood. If
While remaining vigilant, it is time for the West to challenge its vision of the Arab World, and to ensure that the profound wounds of its people are repaired. There are too many issues for which the Arabs have been humiliated and where we don’t take their existence or worries into account. And there have been too many compromises with countries that don’t respect human rights but with whom we calmly do business.
What is needed to extricate ourselves from this situation is a total shakeup and radical altering of the West’s political vision of the Arab world.
Settle the Palestinian problem in a just
and sustainable manner.
These are not just words, they are concrete proposals that Europeans and Americans should examine. For this, we need a great statesman, a visionary, an exceptional man with superior political intelligence and a long-term outlook, with emotional intelligence and a passion for justice, a man who has more than a strategic interest for these ruined countries, but who knows their culture, their traditions and the deep needs they never express because they are wounded. We dream of and hope for this man. He doesn’t exist.
Clearly, he is not Bush or Blair or Sharon or Berlusconi or Chirac. Maybe the General Secretary of the United Nations could be this providential man, but to get there, he would need to be appointed in a strong and decisive way, to accept entering into a power struggle with America, to speak the truth to the ruling families of the Gulf, as well as to certain Arab leaders whose legitimacy is challenged by their own people. Mr. Kofi Anan is a worthy man, but he cannot forsake his role as a neutral figure. Such a man is an idea, a challenge, a passion.
As long as terrorism resorts to a diabolical system of suicide bombing, any attempt to repress it will be doomed to failure. It is not possible to successfully respond to violence with violence. On this basis, democracies lose. The fight against terrorism should encompass diverse approaches and not depend on direct confrontation, but rather a policy that is more subtle, more intelligent and, above all, sincere.
In matters of justice, the Arab world needs consolation. From the moment young people become ready to kill as many innocent people as possible while also sacrificing themselves, from the moment that the survival instinct is replaced by that of death given and received, the West will lose this confrontation. The West needs to ask itself real questions about its past and about what it hopes to do with these people in the future. Values have been corrupted. Religion has been distracted. Hopelessness is exploited with a cynicism based on racism, hate and the need for vengeance. Sometimes the children of immigrants, who are also European, are recruited to be suicide bombers.
Spinoza reminds us that “all things strive to persevere in being.” Let us prove him wrong by making a painful effort to change our way of looking at the world, to change man and possibly help - in a real, effective and sustainable manner - those who are suffering, the children of immigrants who are being ignored. Only justice, the application of the law and the often ignored resolutions of the United Nations; only our willingness, not necessarily to love this world that is suffering, but at least to look at it, to consider it in all of its unhappiness and to respect its aspirations to live in dignity, can break the hold of terrorism.
