In an article in the Bahraini daily Al-Watan, columnist Farid Ahmad Hassan condemned stabbing attacks perpetrated by Arabs and Muslims against civilians - such as the Palestinian stabbings of unarmed Israelis and similar stabbings carried out in the West. He wrote that such attacks do not bring victory but only spark hatred against Arabs and Muslims.
The following are excerpts from his article:[1]
Farid Ahmad Hassan (image: watanepaper.com)
"In only two days the world heard about three cases of stabbing. The first was in Thailand, where a young man from the Gulf was stabbed to death in a nightclub, in a fight with two Thai citizens. The second was in Germany, where a young man stabbed several people in a train station, killing one and wounding three. The third was in the occupied territories [in Israel], where two Palestinian youths stabbed two Israeli women, who according to reports were elderly, in their backs.
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"The first incident can be classified as [an example of] 'hot-headed youth.' This can be expected in places like that, because when people are under the influence of alcohol, fights break out very easily over a girl, a word or a joke, and sometimes for no reason at all. The circumstances of the second incident are still unclear, but according to the media, eye-witnesses claim to have heard the attacker, a 27-year-old German, cry out 'Allah Akbar' as he carried out the stabbing. In other words, it may have been a premeditated terror attack. The third incident [stemmed from] despair, because what young Palestinian men and women have been doing in Palestine in the recent period can only result from their despair of anything changing and their sense that there is no future and no [chance for a better] life worth suffering for.
"From a moral point of view, the use of cold weapons is seen as cowardly because the person attacked has no way to defend himself. Even if [the victim] is not attacked from the back, and no matter what the justifications [for the act], it is a despicable act that should be opposed. In the case of the first incident [in Thailand], it is easy to say that it was the result of a fight between two people or more, who were drunk, and that the outcome would have been identical had they used any other means they had found on the scene, even a drinking glass. The second incident can easily be defined as terror. If the man who stabbed those people at the train station did it for political reasons, he clearly harmed the group to which he belongs and the cause he champions. This, because the victims... were not the people who should have been targeted, but people who are uninvolved [in the matter]. In fact, it is even possible that some of them shared the attacker's perceptions and principles.
"As for the third incident, even if the motivation was theoretically justified, some people do not accept it from a practical point of view... Some people contend that, in the second and third cases, the victims were people whose killing only increases the hatred for and the persecution of Arabs and Muslims. Nobody should be proud of [these attacks], for they are crimes...
"Hence, some people believe that this method [i.e., stabbing civilians] will not lead to victory, and that those who carry out various attacks of this sort only supply the enemies of the Arabs and of Islam with an excuse to intensify their hatred of all Arabs and Muslims. [Moreover,] they expose the Arabs and Muslims, especially those living in occupied Palestine and in the West, to various dangers, [especially the danger of] being attacked at any time and for no reason.
"The hatred for the Arabs and Muslims intensified when people who do not understand the consequences of their actions began attacking people who have no direct involvement in the events."
Endnotes:
[1] Al-Watan (Bahrain), May 17, 2016.
