New electoral eve, new terrorist attack. This is the line of the Islamic extremism whose aim is to fuel terror, but also to bring the Western political groups with extremist ideologies into power. The goal of the terrorists, once again, is to broaden the conflict as much as possible so that to trigger administrations less and less inclined to mediation. Yes, this is the ultimate goal of Islamic extremism: to bring us all to the global war, to bring war at our doorsteps, as we have brought it to theirs. But there is a need to make some considerations on how terrorists get the disclosure of ideologies, consensus, and even organizational support.
The United Kingdom is waking up today with the news of what happened last night in Manchester: the gravest terrorist attack since the subway bombshell in the 2005 and only two months after the one in Westminster. The remnants of the kamikaze were identified among those of the 22 people who died in the explosion at the end of the Ariana Grande concert in a sports hall.
The US President Donald Trump has just completed his trip to the Middle East announcing the upturn in the fight against terrorism and the “Evil” Islam, stating that this Islam is predominantly localized within the Shiite factions located in Iran. The clear choice on what side to stay made by Trump fits into a secular political / religious war within the Islamic world. The tension between Shiite Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia is in fact the ultimate expression of a war that originated at the very beginning of Islam, the death of the Prophet Muhammad. Sunnis and Shiites have shared the pieces of the Middle Eastern chessboard, geographically and politically, and pursue, without mediation but rather with intransigence, the goal of eliminating one other.
While Iran was celebrating the re-election of the moderate Hassan Rouhani at the expenses of the supreme religious leader Ali Khamenei’s favorite candidate, Trump was committing in confidence and trade to the anti-democratic monarchy of Ryad. That same government, in Saudi Arabia, that violates the human rights of women and prisoners. That administration that produces, legitimizes, diffuses, preaches Wahhabism, the most radical Sunni trend from which Osama bin Laden descends, and which, according to many, is mentor of the Sunni Islamic State. “The Islamic State Group (IS) and Saudi Arabia… In its fight against terrorism, the West is in war with one, but shakes hands to the other “, Kamel Daoud writes on The New York Times.
Not that in Iran they are all angels and goodwill. The National Council of Iranian Resistance, chaired by Maryam Rajavi in exile, states that since Rouhani assumed office, there have been more than 800 executions, and both Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the United Nations Commission for Human Rights have issued various statements of condemnation of the numerous frenzied hangings of the regime. But perhaps what worries most the American administration and the West, including Israel and Saudi Arabia, is Iran’s intention to get equipped with the atomic bomb and to continue its experiments in nuclear research.
Certainly Shiite Iraqi militias fighting in Mossul against the Sunni Islamic Kaliphate of Isis, but belonging to that part of the Islamic world that Trump considers the “Evil”, will question how much it is right to continue to make themselves available to the forces led by the United States. But we must certainly also ask ourselves how much responsibility the West has in fomenting hate, violence and feeding funds within that Islamic medieval culture that cannot and must not reconcile with Western democracies.
The factors that are complicating the geopolitics in the Middle East and that are introducing the West into this fratricidal Islamic war are: our energy dependence on oil and the consequent flow of money that we send, the sale of weapons and the use of these in the whole Middle East, and the Israeli issue, a strong US outpost in the area. In this sense we have to read the gigantic Arab shopping package that, according to Trump, is worth “400 billion dollars”, and that puts the United States as the main provider of weapons and political support to the Sunni Dynasty of Saudi Arabia.
What is inconceivable, however, is how the West continues to consider this theocracy as an ally and wants to maintain subordination to the Middle East in function of the God Oil. Technologies to free ourselves from the dependence on fossil fuels do exist, from the varied renewable sources to the new solar power plants, the first of which has just been put into operation in Morocco with extensive EU funding: the Ouarzazate Solar Power Station in 2020 will produce 580 Mega Watts. But even more must we think about the future of nuclear power plant technologies, regarding which Italy is at the forefront in the production of plasma containment magnets that will be put into operation over the next few years at the Cadarache plant in France.
Stopping the flow of money towards all the Arab countries would certainly reduce the economic capabilities of these cultures which are so far away from the concepts of democracy, protection of human rights and equal opportunities and it would also likely prevent funding to international terrorism. Certainly, it will not be easy to get rid of the laces and straps of the multinationals linked to the flourishing Middle East market that produces a lot of money but also violence and death. But it will be even harder to release ourselves from the settings of the “Fatwa Valley”, the industry, now rooted in the local cultures, which produces theologians, religious laws, extremist editorial politics and books. Thousands of newspapers, websites and Islamist television channels (such as Echourouk and Iqra) impose their unique vision of the world: from clothing issues to what is allowed or not, what to fight or not. On them the West is portrayed as the “place of blasphemous countries”, the attacks are reported as the result of attacks to Islam, Muslims and Arabs must be enemies of laypeople and Jews. The Palestinian issue, the destruction of Iraq and the effects of the Western imperialism are used to convince the masses of the holy war.
All this allows the recruitment of more or less psychologically stable followers, willing to immolate themselves through attacks in the Islamic countries as well as in the European ones. In Europe, furthermore, we find more and more “second generation” youngsters from Arab families who have lost all original cultural references and have found no room within the European youth culture, the one of the “Erasmus scholarships generation” that they hate so profoundly.
Forse per i politici di turno continuare nelle attuali impostazioni di politica interna ed estera sembrerà giusto e al servizio di quello che è chiamato “politik correct”. Di certo servirà ai propri scopi elettorali, al lavarsi la faccia e le mani dopo ogni tragedia, ma non permetterà di prevenire futuri attentati e salvaguardare le vite umane e dei nostri figli.
In the meantime, we continue to denounce jihadism as the evil of the century, but we do not know how to focus on what has created it and what supports it, both in the Middle East and in the European Union. Perhaps for the present politicians it seems right to proceed with the current domestic and foreign policies, at the service of what it’s called “politically correct”. Certainly it will serve to their own electoral purpose, to wash their faces and hands after every tragedy, but it will not help them to prevent future attacks and to safeguard human lives and those of our children.
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