First there was Mohammed and then there was Napoleon and then...

What breeds terrorism in the Arab and Muslim world? Is it dictatorship or is it foreign occupation or are the seeds of terrorism buried deep in Islam and were bound to spread even without occupation or dictatorship?Certainly I don't claim to have the answer but I'll try to give my own perspective on this issue that has hundreds of political analysist and experts weighing on it, but I have a blog and I have a brain that might not be great but that's irrelevant, as the process of thinking was never monopolized by experts with all due respect to their knowledge.I'm not sure where I read this definition of terrorism but I tend to agree that "it's the use of violence by a group when it can achieve its just goals by peaceful measures"According to such definition the Palestinians military operations after 1967 would probably be considered "resistance" while after an agreement was made of establishing a Palestinian state, similar operations would be seen as terrorism. On the other hand, the violence in Iraq including the military operations against the American troops would be seen as terrorism because Iraqis can ask the Americans through their elected government to leave, and if that happens and Americans refuse to fulfill their promises then at that time fighting American troops would be a legitimate act of resistance.This distinction between various acts of violence is important as it helps us to note where a certain revolutionary group was transformed into a terror net and what situations at that specific time caused such transformation. For example many people look at what happened in Algeria since the early 90s as terrorism, but while this is true for most of these operations, it is not true to describe its start. The Algerian "National Salvation Front" actually tried peaceful measures and won the first round in a free election but then the army interfered and interrupted the election. The "National Salvation front" was denied its rightful place by force, its leaders were arrested and the front itself was banned.Back to our questions, there are two major components of terrorism with an Islamic background, the Islamic brotherhood and those originating from Wahabism. I'll try to deal in this post with the first group as it takes a long post on its own.The Arab and Muslim world were living rather idly before the French invasion of Egypt. Being isolated almost entirely from the rest of the world, Arabs and Muslims were still thinking they were on the top of the world until Napoleon landed with his vast Army on the shores of Egypt.Egypt was then ruled by the "Mamaleek" who are former European slaves that joined Islam and then conquered their conquerors. The Egyptians did not like the Mamaleek a lot and so they did not take active part in the battle between them and the French. Needless to say the Mamaleek army was crushed in a lightening speed. Despite their hatred for the Mamaleek, Egyptians were shocked and disappointed, "How could we, believers be defeated so easily by infidels? Didn't God say that he's always with the believers?" they wondered, and when Napoleon entered Cairo with all the recent scientific inventions of that time, Egyptians were even more shocked as they saw what they've never seen or even thought they would live to see. "Could this be the reason?" Some thought "yes" and others thought that it was the decay of Islam that allowed the "infidels" to defeat them and not advanced science.Later on, and after the French left, the new viceroy of Egypt, the Albanian Mohammed Ali known as "Mohammed Ali Pasha the great" made it his policy to send Egyptian students to study in Europe and mainly in France and Great Britain. The knowledge that these scholars brought back with them is one of the reasons why Egypt with all the miseries it went through is still the leading Arab country in many fields.But it was not just science that these scholars brought with them, as many of them went to the west seeking an answer to why the west is so advanced while Arabs and Muslims live in such a misery. They were divided in three main groups in respect to their conclusions. One group was very impressed with the western civilization and called for secularism and encouraging scientific research seeing that they're the main reasons to why the west was so advanced. Another group was impressed with the national governments in France and some European countries and called for the unity of the Arab world (Arab nationalists). The third group was impressed with the scientific achievements of the west but thought it's not necessary to accept the whole European culture to achieve similar results in a Muslim country as they didn't like the "moral decay" they saw in Europe and thought that the salvation of Muslims lie in the reform of Islam without abandoning its principles.It was the fact that most Arab/Muslims couldn't help but relate between Islam and their nation's glory (since it was Islam that put Arabs on the top of the world in many fields for many centuries) that made many of them think that they can only achieve progress if they give Islam back its place in the centre of their lives. Some thought they should revive it the way it was in the beginning (Salafis/Wahabies) while others thought they should reform it using knowledge obtained from the west to meet the challenges of the present time (Islamic brotherhood).The Islamic brotherhood rose in Egypt in the late 20s at the hands of Hasan Al Banna but earlier attempts to reform Islam and use it to reform the political syatem that in the end led to the formation of the Islamic Brotherhood started much earlier through the efforts of the Afghani Jamal Al Deeen Al Afgahni and the Egyptian Muhammed Abda and later on in what is now known as Pakistan through the writings of "Abu Al A'ala Al Maudoodi", a journalist and a Muslim activist. His writings though got more supporters in Egypt where the Islamic Brotherhood was formed, not by clerics or Shiekhs, but by scholars who studied in the west.Sayed Qutub, one of the most prominant early leaders of the Islamic brotherhood in Egypt for example got his master degree from an American university and most of the Brotherhood's leaders were doctors or lawyers. This was not a coincidence nor it was a phenomena limited to the Islamic Brotherhood in Egypt, as Abbas Madani the leader of the "National Salvation Front" in Algeria had a PhD in philosophy from the Sorbonne.Anyway, the Islamic brotherhood was a reaction to the miserable conditions and the corruption of the Egyptian government. It is interesting to see that such movements didn't achieve much in Iraq or Syria and most of the Arab states despite their situations were pretty similar! Egypt was also the stronghold and the main drive behind Arab nationalism wave in the 50s of the last century. It was the earlier cultural shock in Egypt that made her lead in this area.The struggle between these three groups was not only local since world events played a very important role in shaping it and in deciding which group would take the lead. Arab liberals had little support since the ideas they were promoting did not find much support in the Arab/Muslim culture that was already manipulated by the 'Sultans' and their preachers to close any window that allows a positive change or any change for that matters. Yet some of these Arabs affected by the western civilization were attracted to the Marxist theory and with the extreme poverty that made socialism looks a perfect answer for Arabs/Muslims problems and with the huge propaganda from the former Soviet Union they were able to get the attention and the support of a wide percentage of Arab Muslims, especially the poor who comprise the vast majority.In the late 40s of the past century revolutions against the corrupt useless regimes were looming in the air in most Arab countries. These revolutions were obviously going to be a communist-Islamist one in some and a solely communist in others like Iraq. Such thing was of course unacceptable by the west at a time when communism was gaining ground everywhere, and thus came the counter-revolutions in the 50s. Military coups by Arab nationalists that seized the power in most Arab countries overnight and drove hundreds of thousands of communists to prisons and torture rooms. The Islamists however joined the communists in their cells mainly because they were a threat to the new tyrants rather than the west.In Egypt the more radical Hassan Al Banna was assassinated while the more moderate more sophisticated Sayed Qutub was imprisoned several time before he was executed by Colonel Nassir who accused him of planning a coup. Most of the more intellectual leaders of the Islamic Brotherhood faced a similar fate. Sadat on the other hand kept those who used their brains and thus were more dangerous (to him not to the society) in prison and set lose the followers and even used them in combating communism that was still breathing. The same happened in Algeria where the leaders of the "Salvation Front" were all imprisoned and the front was banned.These Islamic groups were not terrorists. They were Islamic reformists with some fundamentalist elements who wanted to save their nations from tyranny, starting with peaceful measures. Their main weapon was "Da'awa" (preaching) not bombs or guns and in this they don't differ a lot from any Christian fundamentalist group in the west. The main difference between them and traditional Muslim clerics and preachers is that their enemy was not the west or Israel, but it was the 'Sultan' and his gang. They never called for a Jihad on the "infidel" and never attacked western interests in their early beginnings. They were fundamentalists in calling for the "rule of God" but they embraced western science, technology and literature and they were definitely not terrorists.The fierce campaigns of Arab governments against these early groups of Islamic reformists left no place for more moderate leaders, as what could've they surved for? Writing petitions to Nasir? Or maybe to the UN!The same reason pushed moderate followers away and attracted more radical ones to join more radical leaders.The younger generations were hopeless, enraged and equipped to fight for their destiny but they were left without any smart leadership and they knew they could never win against so many strong enemies who stand between them and even trying and take part in deciding their own future. Their new leaders had no real strategy or wisdom and they chose the path of the weak and desperate, they chose to fight and destroy a world they couldn't and were not allowed to change for the better and they chose to destroy themselves with it.When Khalid Al Islambouli, the young Egyptian lieutenant who planned and led the assassination of Anwar Al Sadat was asked by the judge, "When you decided to assassinate the president, did you consult any of your religious leaders? Did you get a fatwa from anyone that justify killing a Muslim and not any Muslim, your legitimate leader? Or was it a decision you made alone" Khalid's answer was, "Ask whom? They were all in prison".Terrorism in the Arab world is a multifactorial phenomena but it was never the result of hatred to the west or a reaction to an invasion. It was always an act of followers of revolutionary Islamic organizations that were looking in the beginning to reform Islam and save their people but being fought with extreme force, deprived of their thinkers, they drifted from their primary track to face their brutal dictators, their own society and the whole world with even more brutality than those of their oppressors. They lost faith in fixing their government peacefully, they lost faith in the world that always stood by their governments and they were blinded by desperation to lose faith in their own people. This is not a defense of these terrorists as I believe everyone is responsible for his acts but it's an attempt to show the factors that led these people to become the monsters they are now.In the Arab world, first there was Mohammed who led an insignificant group of the human race to dominate the world by giving them a flame of passion and belief that made this bunch of Bedwins defeat the Persian and Roman Empire together at the same time, and build a civilization that although was bloody and corrupt at many points but did contribute a lot to the human civilization.Then there was Napoleon who showed these people that their sun had set long time ago when they were still dreaming that they're the ones, and that Mohammed may not have the whole truth and that in order to make any progress they have to reconsider and use their minds.And then there was Nassir who showed them that Napoleon was wrong in that their land is still a place were you live by the sword and die by the sword. So which one of these was responsible for pushing this group of Arabs and Muslims to the edge?I think it's the indirect effect of the three elements together (and that does not mean they are all bad) plus the effect of global conflicts. The wave of terrorism we are wittnessing in our times would never have happened with only one element acting alone.In my mind, justice freedom and job opportunities are the only answers to terrorism and the only way to restore faith in life to desperate young people that have not yet joined this circle of terrorism. Yes Islam promises those who die for the sake of God to go to heaven but that's not special to Islam. It's the interpretation of God's cause or sake that has been modified by sick clerics to meet the uncontrolled and unrestrained passion inside the hearts of desperate Muslims and convince them to end their miserable lives and take as many "infidels" as possible with them but in the end only the weak who are living in hell would kill themselves to get a fast ticket to a promised paradise.