The Levant News publishes global voices from a wide variety of people with different backgrounds. After stories from the Netherlands, Lebanon, Italy and the United States today Mohammed bin Hussein Al-Dossary writes from Saudi Arabia about Islamic fundamentalism.
The spread of the so-called ‘Islamic Awakening Movement’ (Al–Sahwa Al-Islamiyya) and their superficial views of Islam heavily influenced the Saudi and Arab public perception of Islam. In the past three decades it mainly showed a shocking and violent image of Islam that found its way into households all over the world.
The movement had a profound effect and role on the consolidation of images of hatred, violence, envy, and the idealization of the destruction of moderates. Both in the Middle East and far beyond.
This Islamist current willingly removed the thought of tolerance and human sympathy that Islam calls for towards innocent people whether they are Christian, Jewish, Muslim or anything else.
French attacks
As soon as the news came in of the terrorist acts that had taken place in the France, shocking reactions came from various Islamic societies around the globe. Reactions of joy and pleasure of about what had happened, because it happened in a non-Muslim country. These joyful images were deliberately were censored out by the mainstream media and social media in anatomy and detail in order not to disturb perception of Islam.
Under the pretext of what is happening in Syria and Iraq, deliberate misinformation is being spread to the public of the radical reality on the ground and their political origin. It is evident to many scholars that that the fingers of terrorist and "jihadist" groups are clearly behind these actions: whether belonging to groups such as ISIS or Al-Qaeda, or and other naive supporters of Islam.
Followers of these movements are taking pride in their enthusiasm to be ready to kill themselves in suicide attacks against the ‘unbelievers’ in support of the religion of God.
This what they were taught and how they were mobilized over the past decades by the various fundamentalist movements. In many ways it seeped into the depths of the disciples and it was entrenched in the mentality of generations of young men and women.
Fundamentalist convictions that became their rules of religion, rejected by other. Radical ideas drawn from Islamist ideas, either directly or indirectly.
A mentality was established by the Islamist ‘Awakening’ school of thought: a broad concept op ideas about how to form contemporary modern state and its external relations. While at the same time regarding modern organizations and laws that organize societies and advance them to development and progress in regards of how to deal with others.
This process made society weak-minded in the face of terrorist, and jihadist and its ideas. It tempted believers into blowing blow themselves up in the mosques: ideas that transformed human beings into become a tool to kill innocent people, while at the same time distorting the image of a pure religion.
Likewise, the awakening thought that dominated the Islamic world for decades has made members of society engulfed and closed to the intellectual enlightenment. It had unprecedented results on the elderly who cannot read nor write well and do not have the slightest principles of true knowledge. It even provided them a sense of pride and happiness.
This state of conditions that was established by the power of the religious awakening of atonement, whose effects remain evident up until today. An awakening hidden behind the mask of reciprocity against the infidels, the enemies, advocating for the weak and defending injustice towards them. A sad surreal picture that we find in every painful event that crushes many of our people in humanity.
Unless we begin to deconstruct and dissect what that ominous awakening was doing in our elders and sons and daughters, we will remain in this status quo in which we will see more suffering in our countries.
Mohammed Hussein Al-Dossary is a Saudi lawyer and prominent researcher in Sharia science.
