Israel Matzav

Arab press: Not that there's anything wrong with them, but bombs in Times Square don't help us

The Economist has a collection of Arab media reactions to the Times Square bombing attempt. They have headlined it: What the Arabs say: An idiotic jihad. The Economist missed the point. What's striking about these reactions is that not a single one of them unequivocally condemns the terrorist's actions because they were wrong. Here's a sample:

Jihan Mustafa writing in Moheet, a pan-Arab online news website, linked the bomb attempt to the fallout from the attacks of 9/11 and criticises Mr Obama for allowing the war on terror to move to Americans' backyards:

“Mr Obama should have learned from what followed the 9/11 attacks to avoid repeating the mistakes of his predecessor, Geroge Bush. Instead he insisted on sending more troops to Afghanistan and intensifying attacks on the tribal regions in Pakistan. So the Times Square attack came as no surprise. Not only did this incident reveal the futility of America's tight security measures. It also highlighted that its war on terror has not achieved any of its goals. Instead it has created a new generation of “enemies” unknown to the American intelligence services. A closer look at the life of Mr Shahzad, the suspect who attempted to plant a booby-trapped car in Times Square, New York, and at the American chaos that followed, supports this theory.”

Translation: "You foolish Americans. If you'd leave the terrorists alone, they'd leave you alone." If only....

Then there is Egypt, the country with the third largest foreign aid grants from the United States year after year for the last thirty years (they used to be the second largest until the US went into Iraq in 2003).

In Egypt, criticism focused on the attacker and groups such as al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Muhammad Hamdi, writing in al-Youm 7, an independent weekly, declared that the car bomb was part of an “idiotic jihad”:

“What if the car bomb found in Times Square in New York had gone off? At the very least, we can imagine consequences similar to those which followed the events of September 11th...

The West was swept by a wave of aggression and hatred towards Arabs and Muslims who are still paying the price for the attacks of 9/11 in most European and American countries and live as suspects until proven otherwise... This is only some of what we lost to the idiotic jihad of the “Manhattan invasions”, as al-Qaeda's leader Osama Bin Laden called them. What would have happened if the Times Square assault had been successful? What if the Taliban’s bomb had actually gone off? [...]

This idiotic jihad, which takes the form of attacks such as those on Manhattan and Times Square, among many other foolish actions on the part of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, means that these fools insist on portraying Islam as a terrorist religion and Muslims as a society of backward terrorists. In the end, we all pay dearly for such foolish actions.”

Translation: "What you did is bad for Muslims. If you keep doing things like that, the US will be hostile to Muslims, will forget that we are a 'religion of peace' and will attack us. So if you're going to insist on doing things like that, at least wipe out half of New York City the next time.

And then there are 'our friends, the Saudis' who still haven't owned up to the fact that 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi born.

An influential Saudi daily, al-Riyadh, urges readers to use the attack as an opportunity for self-reflection, asking why Muslims do not co-operate in the struggle against terrorism:

“Terrorism will persist as long as there are organisations that are willing to provide financial and human support. There are plenty of countries and groups that are willing to support this cause.[...]

The Islamic world all its institutions, regimes, and governments should denounce the attempt, not to sympathise with America but rather because Islam rejects such actions.[...]

There is no serious co-operation on the part of Muslims to pursue and expose terrorist cells. [...] It is a problem that requires more than mere hope and good will to solve. Linking aggression to Islam means we must find ways to communicate with other nations and change their view of us. This is what we need to tell every country and nation in the world: we are all in this together.”

Translation: "There's nothing that can be done about terrorism because people have grievances and support it, but please don't say you're doing it in the name of Islam, because Islam is a 'religion of peace' and every time you do something like this, it makes it harder to set up madrassas in the West."

/Crickets chirping

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:32 PM