A Perplexing, Deadly Whirlwind

A few months ago, public opinion in the Arab world was occupied with news of the murder of an Egyptian lady, Marwa El-Sherbini, in Germany. While Arabs and Muslims were shocked and surprised at the deliberate act of killing an innocent woman, whose only crime was that she was a Muslim living in a Western country, the news of the terrorist act was met with indifference by people in Germany and the West because the victim was a Muslim.

Two days ago, the American public was shocked by the killing of 13 soldiers at the Fort Hood military base in Texas by an Army psychiatrist of Arab decent. This is one of the largest American bases and is considered to be the primary center for preparing military personnel for deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan. Meanwhile, people in the Arab and Islamic world are sympathetic to Dr. Nidal Malik Hasan, considering him a victim subjected to a case of hostile provocation that led to his breakdown. According to what was purported, the doctor was treating soldiers and officers who described disturbing and inhumane incidents involving the elimination of large numbers of Arabs and Muslims. But as their human conscience awakened, the soldiers experienced phases of depression, states of disassociation and more.

It is beyond doubt that the random killing of American soldiers by this officer reveals that he is ill, frustrated and has had a mental and nervous breakdown. But all this does not justify his crime, for which he must bear the consequences. What is not allowable is to hold all Arabs and Muslims responsible by judging them to have hostile inclinations, with an eagerness to kill others in retaliation for the killing of their families and people. This is in addition to all forms of pressure and coercion that the Islamic world experiences through preventative war, U.S. hegemony designs and so forth.

What we hope for is that international Zionism and the forces of the conservative right do not exploit this isolated criminal incident to judge Arabs and push the American administration to seek revenge and become hostile to Arabs. But, at the same time, there needs to be an Arab awareness regarding the seriousness of the divide in human consciousness between East and West, and how to further promote rapprochement attempts between the Eastern Islamic world and the Western Christian world. This relationship cannot continue to be governed by mistrust and mutual bad will. We need to realize there are “apostates” in the ranks of a nation representing dark forces that carry out limited and minor terrorism operations against the West, where they are accompanied by an inflated and inciting media campaign about the magnitude and the extent of their threat. The Zionist evil forces seize on this instigating campaign, making it audible and thunderous. Moreover, they attempt to promote this campaign as a reflection of the position of all Muslims, while those apostates who claim they are capable of defeating the West do not represent one in a thousand from the Islamic world.

They are incapable of posing a threat to the Western capitalist system and they are unable to reproduce an operation similar to September 11, 2001, which was an American Zionist production with excellence. The most that materialized from these outlaws was a small operation in London’s train stations and another one on Madrid’s trains, where a few individuals placed a suitcase bomb on a train and fled. In summary, there is imbalance and exaggeration regarding any operation, even if it was by one individual, such as the case of the Arab psychiatrist that is bound to be exploited in the worst possible way against Arabs and Muslims.