2018年09月09日
"The Peace on The Horizon - 70 Years after The World War 2 in the Middle East"(45)
By Areha Kazuya
E-mail: areha_kazuya@jcom.home.ne.jp
Chapter 6: Genealogy of Islamic terrorism
6-2(45) Terrorism crosses the border easily
Terrorism is the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims (from the Oxford Dictionary). According to the definition of terrorism, there is also a political aim in religious terrorism of Islam. What is the political aim of Islamic terrorism? Many of the targets of Islamic terror is the secular regime regarded as apostates. And their aim is to overthrow the secular regime. That was the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Many terrorist activities of Shiite was aimed at Mohammad Rezā Shāh Pahlavi, who was a typical secular ruler. Then Iranian Revolution was happened. Ayatollah Khomeini established a ruling system integrating religion and politics called "Velayat-e Faqih". The theory justified the control by religious clerics until the Mahdi appears. After grabbing power, Ayatollah Khomeini called for an uprising of Shiite Muslims who live in the Arab world.
In response to the request of Ayatollah Khomeini, Hezbollah of Shiite organization stood up in Lebanon. In addition to the conventional terrorism against Israel, Hezbollah extended the terrorist activities against Americans, especially military officers. Israel and the United States are the same enemy for Hezbollah. In 1983, the US Marine Corps headquarters in Beirut was bombed by terrorist attacks, and 241 US soldiers were killed or injured.
In Egypt, antipathy against Egyptian President Sadat who concluded historical peace treaty with Israel has ignited religious consciousness. He was assassinated by the officers of the jihad group in 1981. Furthermore, Sunni terrorist group Al Qaeda led by Osama Bin Laden activated terrorism throughout the Middle East. Al Qaeda carried out a bomb terror aimed at US soldiers in Aden of Yemen in 1992. Austrian tourists got involved in the incident.
Shiite terrorism led by Iran and Sunni terrorism led by Al Qaeda spread in the Middle East to North Africa. The United States beyond the Atlantic Ocean was the next target of Al Qaeda. The bombing of the World Trade Center Building in New York in 1993 was the first terrorism in the main land of the United States. It was a prelude of catastrophic September 11 attacks in 2001.
Constraints such as artificial borders or geographical five continents separated by the ocean are meaningless in religious terrorism. And in the modern information society connected by the Internet, a sense of solidarity propagates widely and with high-speed. The 1990s was an epoch-making era when Islam terrorism began to spread over the world. It was a characteristic of religious terrorism to easily cross the border regardless of states.
(To be continued ----)