Experts say that “there is a lot of talk but little thought” about terrorism

Researchers from Morocco and Spain debated this afternoon in Almeria about Islamophobia and its link with the so-called “jihadist” terrorism, a phenomenon about which, in the opinion of the managing director of the Three Cultures Foundation, José Manuel Cervera, “there is a lot of talk but little thought”.
This was pointed out by Cervera during his speech at the inauguration in the capital of Almeria of the meeting ‘Terrorist threat in Europe and Islamophobia’, organised by the Association for the Environment and Education (AMAE) with the sponsorship of the Council of the Moroccan Community Abroad (CCME) “It cannot be that we fall into commonplaces, into simple answers to complex problems.
It is intolerable that a religion like Islam is criminalised when 95 per cent of the victims of so-called jihadist terrorism are Muslim victims,” he said. He has maintained that it is “intolerable” that attacks such as the last one suffered in Somalia with 300 fatalities are taken “so lightly”, which are “ignored because it is not important to underline that a large part of the victims are Muslims”. He also argued that “the lack of response that this society gives to different problems” makes people express their discontent “sometimes in a very brutal way, voting for Donald Trump or the Austrian extreme right”. The president of AMAE, El Hassan Belarbi Haftallaoui, said that the Muslim community in “Europe in general and in Spain in particular” is concerned about the attacks but also “about the rise of Islamophobia”. “This day comes as a response to these attacks, to say that we Muslims have nothing to do with it, that Islam is innocent and that terrorism has no religion, borders or nationality,” he said. The sub-delegate of the Government in Almeria, Andrés García Lorca, has stated that terrorism and Islam are “two antagonistic concepts” as well as a “contradiction” because “terrorism arises in contexts of materialism, never of humanism”. He advocated dismantling “myths and conceptions that can be negative and favour Islamophobia” and recalled that 119 nationalities coexist in Almeria, including approximately 87,000 Muslims. “Terrorism does not have a country of origin, it is not a phenomenon of a specific culture, it is a universal problem,” he defended. Finally, Abdellah Boussouf, secretary general of the Council of the Moroccan Community Abroad (CCME), said that Morocco “is ready” to collaborate with Spain in “this battle” with the training of imams through the Mohammed VI Institute in Rabat, as it has already done with other countries. “We need each other to fight against this phenomenon”, said Boussouf, who maintained that “Spain’s security is part of Morocco’s security” and urged not to fall into the “trap of Islamophobia because Morocco can never constitute or be a threat to Spain”.
EFE October 16, 2017 http://www.lavanguardia.com jmg/ja