I believe Islamic awakening is the biggest issue(threat) to international security. A feature of Islam made Islamic awakening a big threat —— It combines religion and politic as one system. The positive side of this system is: it can make people follow the political leader also as religion leader. However, the negative side of this system is: some religion extremists will use some religious to create political activities to achieve their personal benefits. Some extremists believes in the world should all be Islamic, so they would persuade or force others to join Islam. The people who resists of it would be considered as “outsider”。 In this case, there is a huge risk of an explosion of a massacre. Therefore, the international society should all keep eyes on the awaking of Islamic, especially the Islamic extremists organizations and plan for solutions for the sake of prevent an occur of genocide.
Today in Maghreb, indeed North Africa, the Islamic regime was being larger and larger. However, at the first place, Islamic power was weak and suppressed by the secularism. The secularism ruled the countries by authoritarian, similar to oligarchy, which means the power was only in the hands of relatively small elites. For a long time, North African populist was oppressive and they’re transforming the state from authoritarian to a more democratic order. Algeria’s experience shows some improvements of Islamic political regimes and democracy. In 1960-1970, the secularism use hydrocarbon generating as a springboard and trying to make the country more advanced than its neighbors.The hydrocarbon generating benefit populist by creating more jobs, so this increased the purchasing power of citizens. With subsidies of national government, the general price of goods decreased. As the economic growth, government also provide citizens health care and education system, so that they assure the Algerian youth were schooled and trained. However, in mid-1980s, the oil price collapsed. This represent the hydrocarbon generating agenda was ended. The failure of hydrocarbon generated agenda caused more and more middle class youth were socially marginalized. The insistent demand for more economic freedoms evolved into a national wide riots, in 1988. On the other hand, this opened a gate for Islamics an entrance to politic stage.
The Islamic Salvation Front (ISF) opened up the political benefits of Islamic parties. Since the constitution was amended in 1989, nearly 60 parties were legalized. The amendment also abolished the one-party controlled the state by the National Liberation Front (FLN) in 1962. From 1990-1991, the IFS far outperformed its competitors including FLN wether in local, regional or national elections. The IFS attracted a wide range of blocked middle class and socially marginalized lower classes. The IFS also appeals to many groups to be disillusioned by the corruption, opaqueness and manipulation of the government. While some middle class was hoping to reform the government by joining the IFS, the lower classes already had a more radical schedule to eliminate the ruling class. In 1992, FIS was on the verge of a decisive electoral victory at the polls. Nothing would be more dramatic than the occurring of the Algerian army staged a coup and cancelled the election results. Moreover, they banned the IFS and abolished the amended constitution, replaced with martial law. The dramatic failure of IFS incentives some radical wings. The radical wings initiate an insurgency in the countryside. This had result different stages of violence and terrorism, more than 200,000 people dead in this event. After the IFS fall from its culminate, many alternative group appears. Movement for a Society of Peace (MSP) is the most famous one. The MSP solidify its regime by offering the MSP’s middle class base remunerative economic options. This Islamist party doesn’t Show much interested on democratic development. MSP is more interested in enhance its economic status. The MSP regime has constructed Algeria an Islamic society by board casting Islamic programs on TV and radio.
Although those events above occurred in Algeria, however, it has influenced the other Maghreb countries. In Sep 14, 2012. The Tunis Muslims were incentives by the American short film that’s about mocking Islam. Islamic radicals attacked the american Embassy violently. After Salafists destroyed some embassy compound, they burned and replaced the American flag by a black Salafist flag. Back to Algeria civil war, terrorist Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) have emerged in the aftermath of the violent civil war in Algeria, this lead to nearly 200,000 people’s death over a ten year period. Militant Salafists and quitters has been considered as the latter and the hard core of AQIM. Although AQIM seemed to be an Algerian Issue, however, no Maghreb country escaped from AQIM terrorist attack. AQIM-launched attack had influenced the Algeria itself, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Mali, Mauritania even western Sahara. As the regime became more and more democracy in Maghreb, it’s impossible to wipe out or limit Islamic regime and extreme terrorist. With the existence and rise of AQIM, more and more similar organizations rise. Such as: East Turkistan Islamic, ISIS and so on.
As a result we can see that most of the terrorists were Islamists, however, not all the Islamists are terrorist. A religion would make part of the society extreme, thus sometimes we would be terrified by a religion. However, we should not demonize the Islam or Islamists, partially of the extremists were just twisted the original meaning of some religious of Koran. Islamic extremists believed all the people in the world should be Islamic, and many times they would use violent even terrorist tools to achieve their achievements. In this case they actually forgot, the Koran says:”You should use positive and beautiful language to make people accept Islam ideology.” Also, the Koran suggested to be compatible, I believe no one would take violence attack as a “beautiful language” and no one would think the fight between secular and Muslims as “compatible”。 Although there are many Islamic extremists in Islam, but there’s still an amount of non-extreme, pious Muslims. The international society should help and collaborate with those non-extreme Muslims to board cast the purist essence of Islam from Koran to populist and extremists. This is a way to change how Islamic extremists understand their religion. Bias view on muslims exists in international society, board casting the essence of Koran could also clear the prejudice. This is important because if people doesn’t hold prejudice to muslims, the muslims wouldn’t be repulsed and become extreme. Also, people wouldn’t trying to make irritants (Film “Innocence of Muslims” from U.S.) to muslims and caused the security threat. International government (UN) should make international members come to a consensus of stop any form of provoking Islam and Muslims.
Second, defensing Islamic terrorist should not only relying on the UN. Neighboring countries should collaborate and make a military defensing plan once the terrorist has threaten the security. The defense plan should have backups, which means a “Plan B”。 Anything would happen once the emergency situation occurred. The defense plan should consider about different situations and be as perfect as it can. A notable point of the defense plan is: this is only a defense plan, never attacks the terrorists initiatively. In neighboring countries, the stronger country should give military support to the weaker countries. Military support shouldn’t be limited in munitions and finance support, military support should also include: Military training, Defense strategies.
Third, in order to make the connection between neighbor countries stronger, government should use the powerful tool —- commerce. Commerce can connect countries together economically, which can provide material and finance support indirectly to the participator. As commerce considered as a tool to solidify international relationships, it can also be used as a weapon to break relationships. UN members should make consensus(resolution) to boycott any form of provide Islamic terrorist support, including but not limit in commerce and publicity. Any country which default this resolution will be isolated wether economically or politically by the international society.
Forth, every individual national government should also promulgate the similar law to its country: forbid any form of supporting actions forward to Islamic terrorists, or they will be considered as accessary offenders and punished by the law. The “support” does not limit in any forms or any media. If the publicity was showed by a mass media which need interior to audit, like television, radio, newspaper, magazines, the national government were entitled to ban the publisher and punish the auditor by law. If the publicity was shown by the form of mass media does not need audit, like Facebook, Twitter, Wechat Moment, the legal liability would be commit to the individual promulgator. The account will also be blocked out by the network administrator. The people who participate in reporting terrorist activities would get rewards as the information verified. Also, governments was responsible for their privacy.
Last, strongly suggests UN to make policies for punishment towards the terrorist offender in a rational and humane way. Once any government or individuals captured the terrorist offender or accessory offender, every decision of punishment towards the terrorist offenders should follow the international and national law. In this case, any form in any level of maltreat, humiliate, illegal extort confessions by torture and other things that involved in invalid offender’s human right in were forbid. Legitimate defense were aloud once the offender was threatening the security.
In conclusion, this essay was not condemning the Islamic religion. First of all, I’m not holding against to any religion. Inversely, my opinion is: religion and believes are nice, they will give people hope if the level of religion and believe is neutral. As the believers get extreme to their religion and cynical, the believers was then considered as a potential threat. Any religion shouldn’t be demonized by the minorities from its extremists. However, to wipe out these threaten in our society is like trying to wipe out the hornets’ nest, we want to get rid of the threat but minimize the harm to ourselves. As the international society collaborate and developed a more advanced solution, the international security will be more and more solid.
Reference:
Entelis, John. "Islamic Awakening." Great Decisions 26 Nov. 2013: n. pag. Print.
Johnston, Patrick B., and Benjamin Bahney. "Hitting ISIS Where It Hurts." New
     York Times 14 Aug. 2014. Global Issues In Context. Web. 23 Oct. 2014.
Yang, Shu, and Haijiao Jiang. "Islamic Revival and Islamic Fundamentalism"
     ["Islamic Revival and Islamic Fundamentalism"]. Journal of Xinjiang Normal
     University (Philosophy and Social Sciences) (2014): 59-63. Print.
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