Ill society cannot defeat enemy By: Mohamed S. Kamel

Ill society cannot defeat enemy

Ill society cannot defeat enemy, ill society can only create enemies

By: Mohamed S. Kamel

Sep 15, 2001

We are still in the first shock of what has happened on Tuesday September 11^th, 2001 in NY and Washington, we still cannot be sure if that was a science fiction movie or if it was reality. This date is the beginning of a new era, a date where a line will be forever drawn between what we were before and what we will become after September11^th, 2001.

Our heart is going out to those who lost their peace, to those who lost their lives, to those who lost close family members and friends. Our heart is going out to those who lost a father, a mother, or a child and we offer our prayers to those who died and to those who survived this terrible attack.

We are the first to feel this pain, because we have been living with it for a number of years, we have been suffering throughout modern history from lack of peace, from injustice and unfairness. Those who have relatives in any place across the ocean would know more about what this terror means, which in no way minimize our pain of this horrific attack, but it is simply to underline our understanding of this pain.

This attack showed the face of every body not as per the media, but as per the people practicing in the street. We the Muslim have been treated for a long time unfairly by the media, and many of the media outlets remains to date committed to the racist behavior toward the Muslim and Arab citizen while neglecting the fact that we are citizens of this land with full citizenship's rights and obligations.

When a society is proud of being civilized, many of its media outlet spread hate and some of the population practice this hate, that means this society is ill and could not defeat any enemy, this society can only create enemies. We never point our fingers to the majority of society whom are Catholic in every attack on the protestant in Northern Ireland and vise versa. Likewise, we never point our fingers to every Jew in our society for every single attack against our grass roots families in each Arabic country especially Palestine. Why finger pointing us when an attack has occurred even before having any evidence, is this real? Is this another Oklahoma? Why we have to be treated as foreigners?

We have been treated unfairly over the years and even more so in this grieving attack. Our point of view never been presented and all of us are considered as suspects even from some of our close neighbors, that is, classmates, colleagues, and co-workers. Not only our feelings never been presented but also sometimes, we are presented as the enemy of civilized society. What humiliation this is!

That is why the Muslim community of Montreal has decided to publish this special edition of our community paper and we hope that this edition could act as a wake up call, to all of us to be ready to defeat our enemy, whom will never be defeated unless we defeat the one that is living inside us.

From day one, all and any Arabic name on the plane has been considered as suspect, that is as if there is no single person carrying an Arabic name could travel for any reason but hijacking a plane, and when people from other origins were questioned, there is no mention about it in the media.    

Let us be clear, under no circumstances would we support the attack against NY and Washington on September 11^th, 2001, and under no circumstances would we support any act of terror against any innocent civilians.

All of us saw this horrific attack, we witnessed many of the reports from the media around the world covering the events in NY, but did we try to see with fairness what is going in the world around us? If we ask ourselves this question fairly and with an open mind, the answer is supposed to be no! The simplest answer for this question is because every single one of us usually likes to see what happened from his perspective and that is why the world is full of Wars, hate, and crimes.

When there is a crime, someone is directly benefiting from such a crime. In addition, the precision of this horrific act point out to a highly sophisticated and resourceful mastermind that even the direct tools used to implement this evil plan may be unaware of. 

Arabs and Muslims cannot benefit from such an act and do not have the resources and sophistication needed for its planning and implementation.

To scapegoat the Palestinians, the Arabs, the Muslims as an easy target will not solve the problem even if some or all of the direct perpetrators were Arabs or Muslims. No one in the North American media mentioned anything of what been reported in other media concerning other possible scenarios that may exclude Arabs or Muslims.

We all will benefit from this war against terrorism and injustice- we know injustice is not part of the banner of Mr. Bush- but we should understand that there is no way we can end the terrorism without applying justice. That is why Great Britain has not been able so far to stop the hostility in Northern Ireland or uproot the Irish Republican Army in 30 years.

All of us are ready to defend the right of life and the way to live; we are ready to be part of this long struggle against a real enemy. To build a real globally safe society, we have to build it with fairness politically and economically and we have to bring to justice all who did or will terrorize any people.

Ill society cannot defeat enemy, ill society can only create enemies