Alia A. Toukan - Jordan Times, 9 November 2006
 
 
Amman - A year ago, many across the world were shocked by news of bombs exploding in Jordan, a country seen as an oasis of stability in a volatile part of the world. We Jordanians were particularly pained and angered by the bombs that killed family members, friends and acquaintances. Although we had watched the rest of the region and the world increasingly being targeted by terrorism, we simply did not think it would happen to us — or at least hoped it would not.

The feeble reaction, however, we Arabs and Muslims have expressed regarding terrorism in the region and the world may have helped encourage an environment where terrorism is tolerated.

If we are to presume that terrorists inflict fear and terror in the belief that they have support for their agenda (at least from some people, at some level), then every time we have been silent we have in fact encouraged terrorists. Every time they killed in the name of Islam and spoke on behalf of Muslims, and we remained silent, watching the senseless killings, we acted as indirect supporters of their terror (and allowed them to usurp legitimate resistance struggles in the cases of Iraq, Palestine and Chechnya, for their own ends).

Every time we stood silent as they killed innocent people and bombed civilian locations we added to their strength, handing them the bullets for their next attack. Our silence has been their ammunition.

When Chechen freedom fighters forced their way into a school over two years ago, holding hundreds of Russian children hostage, many in the Arab and Muslim worlds kept disturbingly silent. The Chechens have legitimate political grievances against Russia, but is Beslan excusable?

In another instance, in October 2004 in Baghdad, Iraqi children were killed by anti-occupation forces while being handed sweets by American soldiers. Thirty-five young people lost their lives that day. Few among us were even aware of this. Their death might have gone unnoticed to some, in the mess that Iraq has become. A year later, in identical circumstances, 27 people were killed, the majority, again, children. No outrage was expressed.

These are but a few examples of how apathetic we as Arabs and Muslims have become. And it is apathy, not cultural or religious backwardness and cruelty, as some in the US and Europe would claim. Decades of institutionalised social and political submission, as well as the West’s relationship with us, have led to genuine apathy; a belief that our voices are simply not heard or valued.

Daily news of the killing of Palestinians and Iraqis, and the bombing of the Lebanese in the summer, have only increased this apathy. It is said that as a coping mechanism the body becomes numb when faced with extreme pain. What we are going through mentally and emotionally could be the equivalent of this physical numbness — who, after all, can stomach watching the daily killings of Muslim and Christian Arabs, by the Israelis, by the Americans, and, as in Iraq, by our own?

Every day, scenes on TV screens and news in print media show death and destruction around us. In the case of Palestine, we have been witnessing killings, oppression and dispossession for decades now. To our east, Iraqis fall victim by the hundreds every day.

Yet feeling victimised only compounds apathy. Like oppressed people everywhere, we have come to view our values in reaction to, and in the context of, our political realities and the West’s treatment of and actions towards us. But values are sacred; they need to remain unchangeable, regardless of the context. Killing of innocent people is wrong and unacceptable. Period. Regardless of the injustice done to us, we should hold true to our values and our Muslim teachings of tolerance and non-violence towards civilians. And, above all, we should not allow ourselves to be apathetic to a breach of our values.

In some ways, the Amman bombings might have created a small shift in unconscious support for or apathy towards terrorism; the very beginning of the end of this lack of awareness, in Jordan at least.

The tragic reality is that human beings, by nature, fail to act until the arrow has turned on them or their own. But we must realise that each time we are silent in the face of extreme wrongdoing, we are strengthening that arrow, until it takes its own course. Until it eventually aims at us as well.

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* Alia A. Toukan is a media consultant and journalist. This article is distributed by the Common Ground News Service (CGNews)