The West’s Refusal To Adopt the Policy of Its Arab Allies Supports Islamic Terrorism

The West’s conflict with Islamic terrorism is failing primarily because it assumes these terrorist organizations can be convinced to adopt Western values such as peaceful coexistence, maintaining agreements and democracy.

Sir John Jenkins, a British expert on the Muslim Brotherhood and Middle East at Cambridge University, writes that “the attitude by the West toward Muslim Brotherhood violence is full of nonsense … violence by the Muslim Brotherhood has been legal since the organization’s founding in 1928 … at its center sits the ideology of Sayyid Qutb, based on violence.” Abu Mohammed al-Julani told Al Jazeera, “The educational system of al-Qaida includes the ideas of Sayyid Qutb … the Muslim Brotherhood clashes with al-Qaida and ISIS, but the overall goal is the same (overthrowing nationalist Islamic regimes, subduing the Western ‘infidel’ and establishing a global entity based on Islam –- the only legitimate faith).”

The West’s confrontation with Islamic terrorism is characterized by a series of failures over the years springing primarily from the assumption that it is possible to convince or tempt Islamic terrorist organizations to adopt Western values such as peaceful coexistence, maintaining agreements, democracy and human rights and preferring a significant upgrade in the standard of living over fanatical ideology.

Western policymakers tend to ignore the fact that terrorism bites the hand that feeds it, as the United States experienced in Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. Israel also learned this this after making democratic gestures to the PLO under the Oslo Accords and the disengagement.

The West ignores how central religious and fanatical ideologies have been in shaping Islamic terrorism since the 7th century, particularly in forging the path of the Muslim Brotherhood. The U.S. State Department and other Western policymakers claim that terrorism flows from economic, social and political despair (therefore, one must contend with it via diplomatic and economic means) and not guided by an ideology of defeating the “apostates” and “infidels.”

The West errs even in focusing on violent activity or tactics by Islamic terrorists and not what is driving a fanatical ideology, or the strategy, and therefore, supports, as did Israel prior to Oct. 7, a defensive policy rather than an offensive one leading to defeat; and they also do so by acting reactively, and not preventatively.

While the West sees negotiations as the means for reconciliation and coexistence, Islamic terrorism sees it as a way to weaken the “infidel” West and to defeat it. The West ignores the fact that terrorism cannot change its stripes, only its tactics. Given the unexpected, violent, bloody and frustrating reality in the Middle East that does not change its stripes, Western policymakers prefer to base their policy on an alternate reality that they can foresee, that is easy and that operates according to Western values; but that is completely removed from what is happening in our region and, therefore, it stirs the caldron.

Jenkins adds, “Islamic terrorism ideology, including the Muslim Brotherhood, is overpowering, tyrannical, and apocalyptic … [it] is a mistake to assume that there is a substantial difference between violent Islamists and pragmatic Islamists who choose, apparently, intellectual, cultural, and political conduct. The leaders of the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia understand this (at least since the 1990s) as they contend with the Muslim Brotherhood and its offshoot organizations.”

The West’s refusal to adopt the policies of its Arab allies supports Islamic terrorism in the Middle East, as well as in Europe and the United States.