Tuesday, July 5, 2016

How the West and its Media Feed the ‘Monster’ of Jihad

 

Government policies, isolation, misogyny, racism, despair and denial. Jihadism is fueled by a poisonous cocktail that has been prepared for decades.

That’s the conclusion of Norwegian filmmaker and activist Deeyah Khan.

Drawing from her own experiences, as well as in depth reporting alongside those drawn to extremist causes, in Jihad: A story of the others she sets out a deep and compelling portrait of a “monster” that is threatening the world we live in.

Speaking to euronews’ Nelson Pereira, she said the hypocrisy of governments who had supported Jihadist groups when they were useful allies against communists or unwelcome powers undermined their ability to tackle the issue.

“The monster has grown,” she observes, “It has been fed, it has been armed. For very many years it was destroying only Muslims. For a very long time, these men and men like these were destroying other Muslims and Muslim societies, eating it from the inside, and nobody cared.”

She singled out two countries as particularly important in the formation of Jihadist sentiment – the UK, which serves as a center for dissemination of radical teaching in Europe – and Saudi Arabia, where many extremist doctrines were born.

“One of main sources of this cancer is Saudi Arabia, it has spread this poison in all of our countries and all of our communities and Western leaders are ready to give it a medal for countering extremism,” she notes.
She explores how young people in Western societies can feel marginalized through a lack of role models, pure racism and exclusion from opportunities.

“The other thing also that is a fundamentally underlying issue in this entire radicalizing thing is access to power. Most men or women of immigrant backgrounds do not have access to power, and cannot participate in power.”

The media plays its part, said Khan, by focusing on the terrorists and killers and ignoring those who oppose them.

Click here for the full article.

Source: euronews.

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