Falling in the mud of madness

Khaled Duzdar, Common Ground News Service -- Partners in Humanity, Jerusalem

The recent targeted suicide attacks on innocent civilians in Amman have shocked us all. It is unclear what message the suicide bombers were conveying and there is no logical cause for such insane acts. What could be the aim of these attacks and what were these mad executioners aiming to achieve? At the beginning, they were claiming that they are the defenders and fighters of Islam and the Muslim world, yet Islam is absolved from these people and their acts and ideologies -- if we believe that these people are carrying any ideology at all. They promote nothing more than killing and they are only aiming to bring the region to a state of lawlessness by disturbing its stability.

The targets are no longer just the western world, western ideologies and foreign cultures; no longer only imperialism and American global domination. The target is now Muslims themselves, Arabs and Palestinians. These actions are baseless killing for the sake of killing and destruction for the sake of destruction.

When actions target innocent civilians, regular people celebrating the wedding of their children and friends, where are the aims and targets of these suicide actions? Who is targeted and why are they targeted? What are they aiming to achieve in killing innocent civilians?

Who benefits from theses actions? Who has an interest in disturbing the stability of regional countries? It is now more obvious than ever that whoever is responsible for the tragic incidents in Beirut and Sharm El-Sheikh is the same party responsible for the attacks in Amman. All these attacks serve only one purpose: to convulse security and stability in the region.

Muslims, Islamic countries and Arab countries now face a crucial challenge. There should be no excuse now for neglecting and denying the dangerous, wide spread of the carriers of this new mad disease. For that, serious actions and plans should be taken to eliminate and exterminate this wide spreading disease from our society and from Islam.

Muslims and Arabs should not only have condemned the global terrorist acts carried out everywhere around the world, but also should move to isolate these destructive, invented beliefs promoted by a group of insane people and carried out in the name of defending Islam and freedom fighting.

Now and not later, is the time for us Muslims and Arabs to take over this responsibility. All Muslim and Arabs should unify in one mission, which is to fight the mad ideologies presented by mad secessionists from what Islam really brought to the world and what Islam really wants to promote.

Their acts only cause severe damage to Islam and Muslims around the world. The false messages they are presenting in the name of Islam have resulted in a global misunderstanding about real Islamic belief. The evil belief of these mad people has sentenced Islam and Muslims to be stained as evil, terrorists, savages and people with no mercy.

Islamic governments and scholars shouldn't stay passive. They should assume their responsibilities now and think and plan how to cure and secure our families and societies from this widely spreading disease. They can't close their eyes and ears from the growing danger and say it isn't our problem and they don't affect us.

These insane missionaries are now knocking on our doors -- Hello, we are at your front doors. Hello, we are here to take you children from you. Hello, we are now killing your families. Governments should act immediately on uprooting them from our societies. Serious actions should include plans to cripple those people and their freedom of movement, to impede providing them shelter, to draw plans to act on how to cut those people off from their financial sources and capabilities to recruit people, and mosques should be prevented from being misused.

Islamic scholars should draft plans on how to defend real Islam from the distorted allegations and should raise public awareness that today our enemies are ourselves. Society should also act in defending their children from being brainwashed and should isolate any intruding damaging members into their society.

Furthermore, specifically as a Palestinian, I do accuse those people for damaging our cause and destroying our years of struggle for freedom. They can't take our cause as an excuse for their evil and mad beliefs. No matter where they are acting; in Baghdad or New York, in Istanbul or Paris, in Madrid or Amman, in Cairo or London, in Beirut or Jerusalem, or even in Bali, it only causes damage for us.

Especially in times where we Palestinians are searching for international support to bring to life the long hoped for Palestinian state.

Our condolences are not just for the four senior Palestinians killed in the last suicide attack in Amman, not just for people we knew, like "Brig. General Bashir Nafea' and Col. Abed Alon," our condolences are not only for the families of the innocent people whose only crime was to attend the wedding of their beloveds. Our condolences are for Islam and what Islam should really represent. Our condolences are for ourselves, who have fallen in the mud of madness.

Khaled Duzdar is a Palestinian writer from Jerusalem.