The narrative proclaiming the end of terrorism and the decline of fundamentalism has not abated despite the recent series of events that demonstrate the opposite.
The bloody Sydney incident has proven that terrorism remains deeply rooted and effective. It was not surprising that ISIS attacked a religious celebration in a peaceful and ordinary country like Australia.
True, Australia has criminalized the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and contributed to the global fight against terrorism. It has not spearheaded this effort however as the United States or certain regional countries have done, leading the way in the battle to crush terrorism.
Some states have long taken a cautious approach to confronting and defining terrorism. Some have not included the Muslim Brotherhood, which laid the foundations for all the terrorist organizations that subsequently emerged; countries have even labeled the Brotherhood a civic rights group advocating human rights and justice!
All of this terror and criminal activity can ultimately be traced back to the theories and machinery of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Sydney attack attests to the grave challenge terrorists pose. Their strategy can be summed up in two approaches. First, they are increasingly focused on soft and safe areas, delivering their political messages through terrorist action to project strength and omnipresence. The attack now being investigated by the Australian authorities seems to have been one phase of a series of operations in several other countries that have no direct connection to the fight against terrorism, intended to spite states that fight and crush them.
Second, their goal is to maximize chaos. They seek to expand their internal chaos across the Muslim world and beyond. This barbaric attack was not a sporadic incident. It was inspired by theoretical foundations whose roots, as I have said, can be traced back to the Muslim Brotherhood ideology that underpins terrorist groups worldwide. Osama bin Laden, al-Zawahiri, Hassan al-Turabi, and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi all believed in the political theories of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Terrorists have long sought to build legitimacy and play a role in the public sphere by manipulating concepts like the “state” or even globalization. Some analysts have even normalized these groups, presenting them as movements precipitated by the globalization that began in the late 20th century. This view of political Islam is particularly prevalent among left-leaning analysts.
The globalization narrative of terrorism has appealed to Islamists and terrorists alike. It offers an intellectual pathway toward absolving themselves of blame and responsibility. The emergence of al-Qaeda is blamed on the West and American imperialism and the wars in Afghanistan, Hamas arose because the Palestinian cause was repressed, and Hezbollah is a resistance movement that protects civilians from Israeli aggression.
In an article he wrote for the newspaper, “Learn to Live with Terrorism,” Mishary Dhayidi made several insightful claims. “The problem with religious terrorism is that it is premised on a closed, exclusionary discourse that negates the other. This discourse is self-assured, rigid, wounded, angry, and enraged; its champions will not rest until they bring the house down on its residents. It is discourse nostalgic for a perfect era that sees the current authorities as wholly illegitimate...” he said.
“The only way to end the rise of terrorists is to wipe out the cultural and social climate that facilitates his rise. This climate cannot be dismantled without a difficult reckoning with pathologies, which does not entail the denial of our identity nor an attack on our civilization. Rather, it demands defending both, and of all of us, in the face of forces driving us toward collective suicide like mad whales,” he added.
To put it briefly, recent operations - and others that could potentially follow, especially as the holiday season approaches - are a dangerous omen. Like the Istanbul attack, it shows that the threat is imminent. Suppressing terrorism is necessary and inevitable. However, tackling the root of the problem demands the criminalization of all these groups, be they Sunni or Shiite.
The Sydney attack was a menacing message to the world, and the response required is straightforward: criminalizing the pillar of these terrorist groups, the Muslim Brotherhood.
