The President of Just and Comprehensive Peace

"This new enemy that emerged in the nineties is our Islamic religion, the religion of justice, love and ethics, which was deformed in the media and education to look as a religion for killing, extremism and terrorism. Whenever there is unrest in any region in the world, fingers of accusation are pointed at Islam, even though there are no Moslems in that region. And every act of destruction or terrorism is considered done by a Moslem until the opposite is proven and most often the opposite is proven. But the accusation remains."

“On the issue of terrorism, President Assad renewed condemnation of terrorism saying that all Arab countries condemned what happened on September 11, out of many motivations " the moral one, we as Arabs, with all our religions, reject terrorism'', secondly for '' human motivations, '' we are the largest people in the world who can feel what it means when a certain people are exposed to terrorism, '' We have been exposed to terrorism with the form presented now, and to the Israeli form of terrorism, '' and to terrorism through its meaning of occupation, oppression and killing throughout history. "Arabs have always been against terrorism, and are the first to combat terrorism,''

“For example, the first lesson that we had learned from dealing with terrorism in the 1980s is that terrorism has no borders, and that terrorists are not related to any religion or nationality. In 1985 President Hafez al-Assad sent a delegation to visit Europe to ask them to define terrorism and to combat terrorism through convening an international conference on terrorism. But they did not pay attention to this at that time. Now, the entire world is asking for combating terrorism. As precisely you have said we do have an experience in this. But now in the west they are talking about Islamic extremism, and I think the picture is not clear in the minds of people. They are confusing three things: Islam, Islamic extremism and what they call in the West Islamic terrorism. Islam is like Christianity, like Judaism, it is a monolithic religion. All religion are moderate religions in the texts, and speak about love, tolerance and forgiveness. As for religious extremism, it is done by people who like to exaggerate their adherence to religion in their practices. And therefore they are locked in their mentality and their practices. Usually, an extremist person is far removed from rationale and closer to passions and emotions, while the moderate person is someone who enjoys more reason and wisdom.”

“The terrorist person is someone who always wants a cover to take as a pretext for his acts. And therefore the terrorist would always choose the extremist rather than the moderate because it is easier to deceive the extremist than to deceive the moderate. So, the moderate person will be able to uncover this terrorist person and not fall as his prey. This is the most important factor that enabled Syria to control and end terrorism in the 1980s. The way we were able to overcome terrorism in our country is by giving support and increasing the moderate voices that are traditionally present in the country. Therefore, to be precise, to be an extremist does not mean to be terrorist as some people believe. But we do not encourage extremism because we think it is far removed from the moderate and real text of Islam. Therefore, the conclusion we can arrive at it is that moderation is the enemy of terrorism. Now, can we consider what is taking place as a combating of terrorism? No. Until now the operation of combating terrorism has not started. Now, there is only a military war against a supposed enemy whom we do not know. I think the Americans do not know who this enemy is! And the proof for that is that all the detainees, whom they call detainees, who had been interrogated did not give any evidence or clear information. But the other question is: Is this war going to help moderation or extremism? I tell you, it is going to help extremism. And therefore, this war is providing a more fertile ground for terrorism. We expressed our opinion that we support combating terrorism but we did not say we support the war. The war against terrorism is an ideological war but not a military one. And therefore, I have always emphasized the importance of supporting moderation because it is the moderate voices that can combat terrorism. We also say we have an experience in combating terrorism, and therefore we would like to contribute to combating terrorism through our experience rather than through the experience of others who had just begun to combat terrorism. I don't think we can allow them to lead us in a battle we are more experienced than them in it.”

“The problem is not whether Bin Laden is dead or alive. The problem is that there is a certain reality that is aggravating hatred and tension among peoples. It is this reality and its causes that should be addressed instead of looking for certain persons.”

“Fighting terrorism armies must not be used because terrorism is not an army. þTerrorism is an ideology and a thought in the first place and individuals in the second place. þ A person may be ignorant and extremism is caused by ignorance. Other elements of terrorism can be poverty. Hence, combating terrorism lies in maintaining consciousness , dialogue and knowledge. When we prevent a person to get knowledge, he will turn into an ignorant and may change into an extremist. When we combat poverty and maintain development, we can reach true battling of terrorism. The last solution is based on security cooperation and not on military actions. Many terrorist events take place as a result of mistaken political stances. The political mistake leads to a terrorist act, and when just and correct political stances are taken, terrorism can be battled. The political combating is far more better than a military solution which only breeds terrorism and cannot combat it. "

“There are terrorist operations in Iraq that claim the lives of innocent people; those we reject categorically. But there is also a resistance movement, and that's a different issue altogether -- a completely normal issue.”

“It also accused Saddam of having weapons of mass destruction. But seriously, if you ask Americans whether they've been successful at sealing the border with Mexico, they'll tell you that it's a very difficult proposition. We've made it very clear to the Americans that it's impossible to completely control our border with Iraq. But we also tell them that the war itself is what's causing the chaos. It's not exactly fair to make a mistake yourself and then start blaming others for it.”

“To be a secular state and a Muslim country is natural. There is no contradiction, as some people might believe, because secularism does not mean opposing religions, it rather means the freedom of religions and dissociating the state from the religion of individuals.”

“As to the Muslim Brotherhood, some of them believe in violence, and some of them are extremists. We have suffered from the acts of these groups in Syria in different periods, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, when they carried out violent and terrorist acts which killed thousands of Syrians and injured tens of thousands in addition to obstructing economic development and other aspects in Syrian life. þ So, the question is not the Muslim Brotherhood, it is rather the part which believes in violence. There are other similar currents which believe in violence and terrorism, may be because they believe that this serves Islam. Of course, there is no Islamic terrorism, because terrorism is separate from Islam. It is only terrorism. But now the term "Islamic terrorism" has become common. This is a dangerous type of terrorism. When it targeted us we conducted a campaign at the level of some Western European countries in order to persuade those countries that hosting some of the leaders of extremism and terrorism in Europe will rebound against them one day. We did indeed suffer from these groups in the 1970s and 1980s, and they started to hit at some Arab countries towards the end of the 1980s and during the 1990s. We saw the dangerous consequences in New York, London, and Madrid. You too are suffering from terrorist acts in Russia now. This means that terrorism does not acknowledge borders. If you have terrorism in your country, it might carry out operations against us one day, because you cannot control it. Terrorism cannot be confined by borders. Many countries in the world have started to understand this and to understand that fighting terrorism should be done on the international level.”

It is true that we have experience in this regard because we suffered from this before others and because we live in a Muslim region. We understood that fighting terrorism cannot be done by waging wars. Wars, particularly when they are unfair, actually activate terrorism, and this is what we see after the war on Iraq now. "

Fighting terrorism is in the first place an intellectual activity, because terrorism is a mentality before it is organizations. Ignorance should be fought with dialogue, with fair political positions, because many of these terrorists make a pretext either of a religious cause or a political one. You have to deal with this issue politically. This is the way we deal with terrorism, not by condemnation. Condemnation does not obliterate terrorism. We and the rest of the world condemned the Sep. 11th attacks, but terrorism continued after Sep. 11th. So we have to build a network of international cooperation, and as I said Syria has the expertise and has the desire for this kind of cooperation. "

“In addition to the exploitation of this phenomena, namely terrorism, as a tool in the hands of some powers which claim fighting terrorism in order to intimidate and terrorize the others and attack their cultures, identities and intervene in their internal affairs .”

“Actually, first of all I took the initiative after Sept.11th to help the Americans. Why? Because we have the notion for decades that this terrorism, if it attacks, let us say, in your country in the United States, in East Asia, in Africa, some day it will attack Syria. So terrorism is like the internet, has no borders.”

“What happened in New York may happen in Syria. So that is why we said we have to move now because we tried in the eighties to convince some European countries that we have to make coalition against terrorism. At that time nobody cared about what we said. Because now after the eleventh of September most of the world is convinced about this idea, we said let us move. So we started this cooperation and we told them. I told one of the CIA officials, you have the information, but we have the knowledge because as you said we defeated those.”

“But it is not a matter of organization as you call it or person or group. It is a state of mind. We have to know the culture to know how to fight the state of mind, because those terrorists use any cause and assume it as a mantle to make terrorist acts. So we know what mantle they assume and we know how to fight this and how to deal with it. They committed many mistakes in the United States regarding the security issue. But this was not the main reason. The main reason is that you cannot have the good, normal and sophisticated kind of cooperation between the intelligence and at the same time you have animosity in the political field. So we either have normal relations across the board as a package or let us stop this cooperation.”

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