Richard Engel Quotes
The Taliban mostly attacks international and Afghan security forces. They rarely carry out attacks in markets.
This quotation provides a succinct view of most non-Western Muslims on the issue of the definition of “terrorist.” A “mujahid” can be translated from Arabic as “freedom fighter.” To the rest of the world, terrorism is defined by the techniques and behavior of the doer. To many Muslims, it is defined only by the motive. If one is defending land or a cause, he cannot be a terrorist. The only terrorist to a Muslim holding this point of view is a person who engages in these violent methods for no reason. The essential difference is that to most of the world a cause—even a worthy one—does not justify any methodology or cost. To the Islamicist who accepts Al-Jozo’s point of view, there is NO methodology that is immoral, especially if one is fighting for a cause, and no cause is more worthy than the spread and dominance of Islam and the world of God. Therefore, for that cause, there can be no terrorism as there can be no ethical or moral limits.
This was an incredible admission for the man who was supposed to resolve the Middle East Conflict where Terrorism was the major issue. He of course could define terrorism but as a diplomat felt that it would not be diplomatic to call terrorists “terrorists” if one wanted to discourage them from their terrorism. He also believed that since Hamas and other terrorist organizations had popular backing, they should not be labeled as “terrorists”. His position is typical of those that many in the United States, Israel and other modern democracies criticize about the United Nations. They argue that diplomatic niceties and attempted face-saving produces an organization that stands for little and condones evil.
The Pakistani government and the army were two distinct and separate power centers. The military saw their major problem to be India, and coddled the Islamic terrorists to deploy them against India while claiming the military is not responsible for the attacks. The terrorism that is taught in many Madrassas schools, the government is reluctant to crack down on and get the terrorism out of the curriculum as they will lose many orthodox Muslim votes and the Islamic terrorists might assassinate any politician who threatend their power base. So Pakistan tried at the time to control the terrorist acts but would not do anything to weaken the terrorists.
While that tended to be so at that time, it has not always been so. For example, the civil war in Sri Lanka where suicide bombing vests were developed pitted Sinhalese Buddhists against Tamil Hindus. The 10 percent Muslim population were the only ones who were peaceful. And the PKK in Turkey—although a Muslim terrorist movement operated in a very strong and modern state.
Richard Engel is an American journalist and author who is NBC News' chief foreign correspondent. He was assigned to that position on April 18, 2008, after being the network's Middle East correspondent and Beirut Bureau chief. Engel was the first broadcast journalist recipient of the Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism for his report "War Zone Diary".
