Alistair Cooke, a former British intelligence officer argues in The Guardian that the word “terrorist” is a perjorative term. While admitting that terrorism does occur, a lot of so-called terrorists are actually “guerillas” or insurgents. He concludes by calling for greater dialogue with the Islamic world because they only hate our policies, not our values.
The west uses the pejorative tag “terrorist” to close off critical thought. Terrorists are like a cancer, the argument goes: you don’t over-analyse your disease, you just kill it. This “terrorist” label is key to the mindset that projects the mistaken view that “they hate our values”. The threat, we are told, is existential – “they want to destroy us”. Therefore our only response can be to destroy them. Anyone who disagrees is either naive, an enemy, or guilty of legitimising the use of violence.
]This is wrong. We do diverge on a few values, but the overwhelming bulk of Islamists and Muslims support elections, good governance and freedom (more so than in some European states, the polls show).
So why do Muslims looking for “elections, good governance and freedom” come to the West?
