The issue of our times

His Majesty King Abdullah’s speech at the Arab-Islamic-American summit hosted by Saudi Monarch Salman Bin Abdulaziz in Riyadh highlighted the principal features of any meaningful effort to combat and defeat terrorism.

The King emphasised right at the beginning of his address that an “effective response to the serious threats facing the world” can only be a holistic approach, which “demands coordinated and global action at every level”.

To deal with the complex nature of terrorism, there is need of a comprehensive and multifaceted strategy, but also of a clear delineation of who constitutes a friend and who an enemy.

Clearly one cannot be both, even when the term might be “adjusted” to suit political or other interests.

Within this recognition, it is important to know, as the King said, that terrorist groups “employ a false identity” in order to “mislead and polarise our societies and peoples”.

They, King Abdullah said, “do not inhabit the fringes of Islam, they are altogether outside Islam, they are the khawarij, outlaws of Islam” who make most victims among Muslims themselves, and that disqualifies them from identifying with this religion of peace and tolerance.

As such, a “critical task” for all peace-loving people should be to “sharpen public focus on the values that will protect and enrich humanity’s future: mutual respect, compassion and acceptance”, because “intolerance and ignorance will only aid terror groups”.

But the core issue for the Middle East, which “has driven radicalism and instability beyond our region and into the Muslim world” is the injustice to Palestinians, their occupation and deprivation of a state of their own.

“No injustice has spread more bitter fruit than the absence of a Palestinian state,” said the King, urging “determination to work towards bringing a settlement to this festering conflict”.

To this principal, decades-old problem can be added the later conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen, which have all contributed in one form or another to new waves of radicalisation and extremism, to the unraveling of countries with millennia-old civilisations and their fall into barbarity.

Action, thus, is needed to safeguard the region and stem terrorism from further spreading.

As the King said; “There are nearly 2 billion Muslim men and women today, who enrich our world with their kindness, generosity, justice, civic family duty and faith. Their lives express Islam’s teachings on acceptance, humility before God, compassion and peaceful co-existence”.

The lives of these people and of all the other citizens of the world, depend on the action leaders take to stop terrorism and fight injustice. For, as the King said, “our future is based on deeds, not words. We are all accountable for our commitment to fight radicalisation in all its forms.”

The days ahead will show whether such commitment exists or whether the summit was yet another get together.