Criminals, not zealots

QUESTIONS about the motives behind and lessons learned from the

terrorist attempt to bring down an aircraft over Detroit certainly outweigh those about the security breach or its sloppy and primitive execution.

The timing of the attempt raised eyebrows as it was Christmas Day. The will of the passengers and God’s grace prevented a catastrophe on that day, the holiest on the Christian calendar. The timing is most probably meant to ignite another Muslim-Christian confrontation, building on the eight-year battle between al-Qaeda and former US president George Bush.

Many agree that al-Qaeda was dealt a significant blow when Bush left the White House and Barack Obama moved in.

Having a leader in the US who reaches out to the third world in general and the Muslim world in particular can negate the most significant pillar in al-Qaeda’s, and other extremist groups’, ideology, which is based on the premise of Us vs Them. Bush was, in fact, the “poster boy” of al-Qaeda’s campaign to recruit “volunteers”.

It must have been awfully painful for al-Qaeda leaders to watch Obama addressing the Muslim world from Cairo and calling for a new page in relations between east and west.

As the new year descends on us, the extremists, longing for good old Bush days, seem to want to renew the struggle.

They want to hijack Obama’s agenda and drag the US president into another war on terror. And this is the point of which the US leader must be wary. He should not be dragged into a reaction that could very well spark another clash of civilisations.

He, perhaps better than anyone in his administration, knows that those extremists are out not only to hijack and bring down airliners, but also to hijack the social and political agenda of Muslim societies. They are a tiny minority of Muslims and should be treated as criminals. Crime has no religion. Dubai, December 28.