Terrorism Related Misconceptions about the Middle East

As discussed in the previous post, I talked about the reasons of the misconceptions that the west has regarding the culture and the state of the country. Although I talked about Egypt alone, but the misconceptions are pretty similar to most of the Arab countries of the Middle East. So in this post, as promised; I am going to focus on a very popular subject that is always linked to the Middle East and Arabs, “TERRORISM” and religious misconceptions. First of all, the religious misconceptions, if I am Arab, it doesn’t mean I am a Muslim. Yes, a high percentage and a majority of Arabs are Muslims, but believe it or not, there are Christians, Catholics and even Jews who are Arabs.

And now onto another major misconception, which is probably the reason you are all reading this, Terrorism. Contrary to public and the worldwide belief, as mentioned before, the Middle East is not a big training camp for terrorists, despite what the media is conveying. Some people have this image, which of course is not true, about the Middle East, it goes something like this.

“We Egyptians or Arabs walk in the street, wielding Ak-47’s and rocket launchers, we are all masked and we wear I Hate America T-shirts while screaming Allah-Akbar in the streets, and of course, we are constantly planning how to destroy the west and talking about the latest terrorist bombings that is going to take place.”

This image can’t be further from the truth. The idea that Arab countries support terrorism and fund it is ridiculous. As a matter of fact, here in Egypt; we suffer from terrorism as much as the West does. Come to think of it, we suffer form it even more. Terrorism didn’t get invented in 9/11; it was present years and years before that. Here in Egypt we have been fighting internal terrorism since the 70’s. If we compare the statistics and the damage terrorism have done in Egypt over the years and compare it to 9/11, you will not stand a chance. I’m not trying to underestimate what happened, but I am just saying that we have been suffering from it from years. For example, the president “Gamal Abd El Naser” was killed and assassinated by extreme religious terrorist groups. So do you think a country whose head of state was killed by terrorists will support terrorism?

What I am trying to say is that Terrorism has no religion or country, it uses violence to achieve its own goals that is driven by greed and personal interests. It only uses the cover of religion to pursue its own devious goals. So if you are from the West and you met an Arab online, there is a 99.99% chance that he is “NOT” a terrorist, and he hates terrorism as much as you do. As for the reasons behind these misconceptions that are terrorism-related, they are many, so tune in on the next post where the reasons for such misconceptions will be discussed in details.

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