Middle East Violence - Part II

This is part 2 of my answer to the question of why the consistent violence in the middle east if Islam is a peaceful religion. In the first part I merely gave an account of the major 4 wars in the middle east to which Egypt and Israel were parties and how from the perspective of Egypt they were mostly nationalistic wars. Religion was not completely absent from the picture, however, with the religious claim to the land of Palestine by Israel, but let us continue with discussing the recent rise of radicalism in Egypt.

Sadat, the Egyptian president who made peace with Israel was in some sense responsible for the rise of religious militancy in Egypt. It is said that he encouraged religious groups to emerge and flourish in order to control the tide of communists' movement in Egypt. They were allowed to be active, to recruit within universities, unions, etc. These religious groups were mostly moderates, but the environment was ripe for radicalism to emerge. Sadat's economic policies, long years of wars have made large segments of the society poor, illiterate, desperate and hopeless; creating a fertile ground to incite hatred for the society and to create radicals. These radical groups adopted obscure religious books written by unknowns, at least to the moderates, within the society. By the time Sadat was realizing, the side effect of his plan to fight communism, things were getting out of hand. Radical groups that condemned the whole society have emerged. Those that were not with them were against them. They were willing to kidnap, kill, bomb innocents Muslims and Christians alike in Egypt to try to create public anger to topple the government. Sadat fought back hard, thousands were jailed, tortured and probably more than that. His last days were dark for anyone who dared to disagree with him.

Sadat's demise came on the anniversary of what he considered as the day of his glorious win over Israel. He was assassinated by one of the militants that his policies helped create in Egypt. His death brought emergency laws to Egypt in 1981. Egypt is still under control of these laws until this day. The enormous crackdown on the religious groups, moderate and radical, did not eliminate terrorism and its dangers within Egypt. Terrorist attacks within Egypt occur sparsely and hit any targets especially tourists in order to embarrass the government. In recent years, I have observed that the Egyptian society has slowly tended to become more conservative and more religious. Most women are now wearing Hijab; a scarf covering their hair. Many try to learn more from the Quran and about Islam. This, however, is more of a self-guided return to the religious roots that can actually help fight radicalism within the society.

To sum this part up, political manipulation, economic conditions, hopelessness, oppression and ignorance were and still are responsible for creating radicalism all over the world and not an inherent message of violence in Islam.