I would like to offer my deepest condolences to all the bereaved families of the terrorist attack in Riyadh. May God grant you patience and provide you with solace and may He grant peace to the dead and swift recovery to the wounded.
The attack in Riyadh should evoke from us a response that can eradicate such people from our midst. The police response will in my opinion lead to the exposure of these terrorist cells and their capture, though this may take some time.
Then what is the problem?
As soon as one cell is discovered, another one will form.
Therefore a police response alone will not suffice. We must address the ideology behind the terrorists that gave to them a sense of legitimacy for their actions and a belief that their attacks were a jihad.
This is a task that falls primarily upon our Ulema, who will have to expose themselves to great risk from the followers of this perverted ideology. It is vital that they lead in this, as it is the religious opinion of some of our Ulema and some of their sermons that have been falsely interpreted and perverted by terrorists to legitimize their actions and support their ideology.
Similarly, our press must help in this endeavor, as it has been their relentless campaign to portray everything coming from outside as inferior or evil and everything Saudi as noble and superior which, in my opinion, lends further intellectual support to terrorist ideology because it adds a racist component to their beliefs.
The attack in Riyadh must not in any way stop or even delay the program of reforms called for by Crown Prince Abdullah. The attack should instead provide an impetus to broaden and deepen such reforms and speed up their implementation.
The task of combating terrorism is not one that can be accomplished by any one state on its own and it would be wrong to ignore the role of international events in encouraging or discouraging terrorism.
Our late King Abdul Aziz said: “Kill an Arab, but never humiliate him.”
The US has embarked on a campaign to both kill and humiliate Arabs, the consequence of which is that any and all US citizens will be regarded by some as legitimate targets upon which to unleash their rage.
Remember, someone who is willing to blow himself up to kill you is not likely to respond to sweet reason nor to fear repression in his desire to revenge himself upon you.
Amr Moussa warned the world that the US invasion of Iraq would “open the gates of hell.”
Well, the gates of hell opened in Riyadh last week and red-eyed demons emerged to celebrate an orgy of death and destruction. The US is now reaping the whirlwind. As Casablanca proves, Riyadh was the first but by no means the last of hell’s open gates.
Arab News Opinion 18 May 2003
