The former dean of the shari'a and law faculty at Qatar University, Dr. Abd Al-Hamid Al-Ansari, has recently published several articles in Gulf papers about terrorism and its root cause. According to Al-Ansari, terrorism is the outcome of a culture of hatred in the Arab countries, and in order to eliminate it, the culture of hate must be eliminated. (Courtesy Memri.Org)

"What, then, has made them prefer death to life? I have no answer except the fact that we have not managed to make them love life. We have taught them to die for the sake of Allah, but we have not taught them to love, to build, to create, and to help society for the sake of Allah. We have taught them that nationalism [means] attacking America and opposing imperialism, but we have not taught them that nationalism is love, loyalty, and belonging to the homeland...

"How can this miserable creature called the Arab and Muslim individual not turn to extremism, when he is surrounded by an overall atmosphere of extremism, bound by the shackles of repression and prohibitions, and girded by the ideas of intimidation and terrorization, and of almost endless torment? These accompany this creature from birth to death, beginning with dire warnings about the torments of the grave and enemy plots lying in wait for Islam and the Muslims, [as well as] the long list of prohibitions that has made blessed life - the gift of the Creator - into a prison of pain, from which the individual seeks to escape to Paradise and to the lovely maidens in it.

"As if all this were not enough, we even employ religious police to follow the people, to restrict their freedoms, to spy on them, and to interfere in their personal affairs. So how can there not be widespread phenomena of tension and worry in the souls [of the people]?...

"Go to hear a Friday sermon, and you will find a preacher who is enraged at the world, angry at civilization, spreading the poison of hatred and enmity. Then you will leave [the mosque] tense and angry!...

"The world's young people engage in music, art, and enjoyment of the pleasures of life. They create, discover, and participate in building the strength and the culture of their society - while we engage our young people in religious law disputes on the veil, the beard, how long garments should be, and how to greet Christians - or we engage our young people in adults' political and ideological disputes, or push them to go to Iraq and Afghanistan to commit suicide!

"Hatred is a culture of prohibitions, and the result of our viewing the world as an enemy lying in wait [for us.] Many factors have played a part [in shaping this world view], including the religious messages anchored in fears of plots [against us], the educational messages that have produced in young people alienation from the [modern] era, and a great number of publications by the Muslim Brotherhood and by the nationalists, which have, for the past 50 years, spread hatred of the other and conspiracy theories [against the Muslims]." Read it all