Faith and the Politics of Terrorism
*by Ayi Kwei Armah (globalbreakingnews)*
*Abdelwahab Meddeb, born in Tunisia, now lives in France, where he teaches, writes and hosts a media show lending Arab-Muslim culture a Europhile glow. One of an accelerating flow of migrants fleeing Africa’s multiform poverty for refuge in Europe, their haven of freedom and affluence, Meddeb, having achieved the integrationist dream, should be happy in his earthly paradise.*
*But the dreamer feels insecure. In a Europe waging political, military and economic wars against several Muslim countries, and fearing blowback in the form of suicide bombs and Taliban insurgents, the demonization of Arab Muslims as fundamentalist terrorists can turn the immigrant dream into a security nightmare at any moment.*
*Meddeb blames this insecurity not on European prejudice, but on his fellow Muslims. Muslims, he says, inhabit a sick, cursed society, because they have carelessly allowed a violent minority of fundamentalists to hijack their common image. The disease, then, is fundamentalism, the tendency of believers in one God, or one Allah, to want to impose their faith by violence. Its symptom is terrorism, the use of violence, murder and the threat thereof, as prime arguments for God, against unbelievers.*
*Europeans today, like Americans, have used their media arsenal to link terrorism with Islam. This places a terrible obstacle in the way of Meddeb’s dream of Arab-Muslim integration into Europe. His task is to conjure away the European stereotype of Arabs as terrorists, and of Islam as a religion of unreasoning violence. For, beyond simple integration, Meddeb wishes Europeans could see Arab Muslims as cultural kin sharing a superior faith - monotheism - that makes them an integral part of Western civilization, which to him is the only real civilization, period. **/Occidentalisez-vous/**is his fervent plea to fellow Muslims. Get Westernized!*
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