Terror is still terror, whatever its take
In stating It may be termed as terrorist attacks but what choice have you? You have no choice, so you attack. When people use terror against you, it is legitimate to use terror in return , Mahathir is seen to be endorsing these suicide bombers in their action.
By stretching one's imagination, it would also be possible to endorse the Sept 11 terror attacks. And if we were to go a full circle we would even accommodate the actions of the Israelis as well.
It does not take much to think that some of the actions of the Malaysian police and Mahathir's government in recent years are terroristic in nature. Is he then inviting extra-judicial retribution of similar magnitude by those who feel oppressed? As after all in the logic he has just applied, it would be legitimate.
If we are going to live in a civilised world and would like to continue to belong to the human race, then we have to accept that inequalities are going to be present as they always have. There will be causes whose goals would be to equalise these inequalities. And these will be fair and legitimate goals and legitimate causes too. To have legitimacy and acceptability, these goals have to remain untainted by actions that are inhumane and that cannot be condoned whether by civil society and/or by religion.
If Sept 11 and suicide bombers are going to be etched in our minds, then humanity would be only adding one more constraint on itself. This now becomes a fact of life that we have to live with. What is so sick about it is that along with diseases like cholera and leprosy, humankind now has to contend with suicide bombers as another potential killer.
We found more humane ways of controlling the diseases. I would like to suggest that fighters for whatever causes too find more humane solutions!
Because of the means applied, it is difficult to stop any individual or organisation from carrying out the acts or find out who was responsible for the cruel acts. Such a cause thus loses its real objectivity other than to instil terror in its wake.
Meanwhile, Yasser Arafat and the PLO sit comfortably and untainted by the actions of the suicide bombers. The goals and the cause being fought for would presumably be the same as indeed it would appear that the cause is intended to gain from these actions. While the cause seems to get tainted, Arafat and the PLO seem to expect that they themselves not get painted by the same brush. That I think is the crux of the problem now.
What has happened is a legitimate authority under Arafat having governance over a territory, remaining immune and to some extent indifferent to some of its subjects carrying out unbridled acts of horror and violence against innocent civilians of a neighbouring territory. Arafat and the Palestinian authority remain detached from these suicide bombers.
Now that the neighbour decides to act by bringing its legitimate army down on the Palestinians under its own flag, removing any prospects of deniability, it would seem that their violence is greater and its horror all the more shocking.
It is obvious that the OIC failed miserably in understanding the nature of terrorism and, Mahathir knows it only too well, in defining terrorism. It is all the more certain now that terrorism and terrorists are words whose meaning take a fluid form and that was what we saw at the OIC meeting in Kuala Lumpur.
Its meaning is not only different among the Muslim nations, but also changes form over time. Mahathir is a good example here. At the start of the conference, he was only too happy to call the acts of the Palestinian suicide bombers as acts of terrorists and the actions as terrorism.
A week later, and after gaining for himself the invitation from the White House, he reverses his stand by showing accommodation for the same "terrorists" and acts of "terrorism". Terrorism has no place in any civil society under whatever circumstances.
