Fighting terrorism by Education.

Fighting terrorism has a vital importance to protect and guard home

from terrorism and other illegal activities. It is the first task given to the FBI and the intelligence community, but it should not interfere, contrast, nor limit the individual rights of liberty, pursuit of happiness, and privacy, which are guaranteed by the Constitution. We should preserve the well-proven principle of justice “innocent until proven guilty” in our society, not the opposite. There is no excuse for terrorism; there is no excuse for killing innocent civilians, there is no excuse for violating human rights either, even if it was for fighting terrorism.

I think that the enforcement agencies should be very careful when investigating or searching any individual. The public too has a very important role that is to be vigilant, and report any illegal or suspicious activities accurately to the

authorities without any falsification, lies, or hoaxes. In turn, the authorities should put the suspicious individuals under surveillance until proven involved in any illegal, criminal activities. Then, legal steps could be taken to prove their guilt andprosecute them.

After September the 11th, 2001, some American groups suggested that we should lock up all Muslims and Arabs, either American citizens or aliens, or put them in isolated camps somewhere in the desert, as it was done with the

Japanese after Pearl Harbor attack during the Second World War. Puttin

Americans from Islamic or Arab background under surveillance, arresting

them, or detaining them without any evidence is unconstitutional. Others believ

that we should monitor the individuals from Arab and Muslim background and prevent them from moving money through the banking system, because it might be used for terrorism. Other people think that we should intercept communications and email messages of the individual from Muslim faith or Middle East background.

 Of course, we can’t do that because we would not stop terrorism, but we would hurt people trying to live honestly, and we would violate their privacy and liberty.

In the past twelve years, the American society has been exposed to a new wave of terrorism attacks within the American territories and on the American

land. Before 1992, terrorists and fanatic groups used to attack American interests overseas; like attacking American embassies, consulates, or American firms.

The first case of at-home terrorism took place in New York City during Februarym 1993. Mahmoud Abu Halima had planted explosives in the garage of the World Trade Center.

 The explosion did not cause much damage, left six people dead and one thousand injured. The three terrorists were arrested, prosecuted, and given a sentence.



The second incident took place in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, during June 1995. Timothy McVeigh had planted explosives in a car and left it in front of the federal building of Oklahoma City. The blast was devastating and caused the total destruction of the building, and the killing of 168 civilians and many more injured. The suspect, whose name was released later as Timothy McVeigh, was arrested later, prosecuted, and executed.

          

The third incident and the most severe took place in New York City and

 in Washington D.C. in September, 11, 2001. The terrorists attacked the World Trade Center, and the Pentagon, causing the two towers of the World Trade Center to be obliterated from the face of the earth, millions of dollars in damage, and killing almost three thousands civilians. The terrorists were killed in the attack and none from the nineteen hijackers was arrested.



The fourth terrorist incident occurred in Washington D.C., and its suburbs. Once more in D.C., a sniper killed randomly twelve passerbies without

even ever knowing them or ever meeting them. The suspects were arrested later, and prosecuted.www.washingtonpost.com/sniper

We realize that in the first and the third case, the terrorists were

immigrants from the Middle East, born and raised overseas. In the second and the fourth case, the terrorists were born, raised, and educated in the United States. They are Americans.

After September 11th attack, Congress had to take new measures of

home security to protect home from any further terrorist attacks.

We need to increase home security for our safety and the welfare of the generations to come. Yet we need to preserve the human rights and individual

liberty which are guaranteed by the constitution to every person living in America either a citizen or non-citizen.

Human rights are the ability of people to live with dignity and freedom, to have the power in the choices that matter to them, so long as those choices do not

infringe on the rights of others. They are called rights precisely because they

can not be discarded when times get tough or when circumstances become

difficult. We believe we have these rights by virtue of being humans.

Mary Robinson, the former United Nations high commissioner for human rights, said: “the only long term guarantor of security against such violence is through respect for human rights and humanitarian laws. The best defense to

human rights are the prevention of their abuse and erosion through ignorance.

Loren Craner, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for democracy, human right and labor said: “our governments should not use the need to combat terrorism as a legitimate reason to ignore human rights. The legitimate and necessary pursuit of security does not allow us or our government to trample on the rights of our fellow men.”

       President Bush and Secretary of State Collin Powell made it very clear that the United States does not and will not condemn a whole nation or a whole religion because some of them commit terrorist acts.Yet, there are some cases when human rights were violated through false or misleading information given by the public. These incidents took place right after September the 11th attack, I will mention some of them in the following paragraph;

1- In one of the hotels, the hotel staff falsely listed a radio as being from the room of an Arab person, and investigator missed the fact that the radio was claimed by a private pilot who had been in the room directly below the accused Arab. The hotel employee changed his story from finding the radio in a locked safe with the first person’s passport to finding it on a table. It seems that an innocent person caught in improbable circumstances because the hotel employee lied and misinformed the police about the location of the radio and to whom it belonged.

The frightening thing is how long it took the police to figure it out, and how long

the accused Arab was detained???


2- A flight attendant observed a person on the flight reading Arabic

book (what a crime). She reported the Arab reader to the security on the

flight, after investigating and detaining him for a while, they found out that h

was a secret service agent, working for the FBI, from Arab background.


The naïve flight attendant thought that every Arab is a terrorist.

3- A truck driver was detained and searched on the Canadian borders just because he is Algerian and Algerians have been active in terrorism.

Later on he was released with an apology from the border patrol


4- A woman in Florida was eating in a fast food restaurant. Next to her, there

were three young men with beards (what a terrorist appearance)? She called 911, reporting that she had seen three Arab terrorists. The police stopped the three men in their car, interrogated, and detained them for a while. They were released later on, after it was found out that those three Arab men were medical students and they were on their way to their school in Florida, and that they had nothing to do with terrorism.

Here we find in all cases, Arab individuals were suspected just because they look Arab. To suspect someone according to his racial profile is a waste of

time and resources. In the previous few cases, and there are much more, we find out that the falsification of information and the racial profile by the public led to the violation of the human rights of innocent people who had nothing to do with terrorism. They just lost some valuable time, and they gained a reputation, through the media, of being terrorism suspects.

Now we can conclude that we can fight terrorism and preserve and respect human rights by being very careful when we report some one as being suspicious, and by trusting and listening to our leaders when they give instructions. The enforcement agency should be very careful when investigating, or searching any individual.

They should not be prejudice against people from Arab or Muslim

background, and should not look at every Arab or Muslim as a potential terrorist.

There are Americans from Arab background who are doctors, engineers, computer professionals, professors and they are very well respected and law

abiding citizens. They are all over the country. The American Muslims from

Middle Eastern background are estimated to be about 8 millions. As we have seen before that some of the terrorists who committed horrible crimes were Americans.

They committed their terrorist acts against Americans and on American land.

Terrorism does not know nationality nor color. Jim Johns, who killed almost 1000 Americans, was American. Timothy Mc Veigh was American. Our society has to recognize that tolerance and respect among people are fundamental tenets of the United Nations charter and there must now become crucial components of future security strategies. One of the major components of future security strategy is to preserve human rights and individual liberty.

Yet there are other ways to prevent terrorism from its source, from the Middle East, and that is by education. We must educate the Middle Eastern nations to take them from their ignorance, and put them on the technology’s gate of the 21st century.

I see education as a very important element to any nation; an educated nation is a powerful nation and knowledge is power. Public education is the most important; everything depends on it, the present and the future. As initially conceived by President Thomas Jefferson, “the function of providing all citizens with an education was to insure that all citizens within our democracy were adequately prepared to participate in our political system. For it is the citizen who decides all issues by electing their representatives at all levels of government. A democracy will ultimately fail, he thought, if educated elite controls the country with narrow self-serving interests. By providing education to all citizens, at public expense, diversity in the choice of elected officials as well as a broad based decision-making process on issues affecting citizens would be better assured”.
In his first annual address to congress on January 8, 1790, President Washington said that education was “the security of a free constitution” …that, through education, a free people would know and value “their own rights”…and would be able to “discriminate the spirit of liberty from that of licentiousness. 

Good education is the only way one can break the cycle of poverty and ignorance, and to fight terrorism. Without education, children of poor families would end up getting married at a young age, if not get involved in criminal activities. The married, uneducated couples would then produce offspring who would also grow up without education and the cycle of poverty would go on and on producing terrorists who are angry at the west and the United States, thinking that the west is responsible for their sufferings.  And that is how terrorists are born, from ignorance and misunderstanding of Islam and their views of the west and the Christian nations. Teaching the right Islam, and taking the Middle East and the Arab nations into the gates of the 21st century would help a lot to decrease and to prevent terrorism from its roots. The fanatic and the terrorist groups think that America is the enemy of Muslims and Islam, and that America is planning to destroy them. As a Muslim, I have been living here for the past twenty years; I have not experienced any of these claims. Let us show them the right idea of the relationship between Islam and Christianity. By providing the Muslim and the Arab nations with the knowledge, education, and the technology of the twenty first century, we would help them to better understand Islam and the west; then and only then, we could uproot terrorism.

To fight terrorism from its sources, America should help to educate the third world countries and nations, so that they can understand better and they change their views towards the west and the Christian nations. Education is the answer to terrorism; knowledge is power and is the way to fight terrorism everywhere on the face of the globe.