home

about us

missions

contact us

National Leadership

Desperately Needed: Inspiring Leaders Who will dump a blaming and victimhood game   Elwin Tobing

On December 9, 2003, Sydney Morning Herald, an Australian newspaper, reported, “One of Indonesia's most influential Muslim leaders has put much of the blame for the rise in radical Islam on the country's elite and their failure to relinquish any of their huge wealth or help others.”

In a speech delivered to a conference on security in the Asian region, as quoted in the report, Syaffii Maarif, chairman of the moderate Muhammadiyah organization, which claims 35 million members, said,

“When the deprived see that the state and the government have not come to their defense they feel abandoned . . . when the state becomes an accomplice in maintaining the gap between the privileged and the deprived, they get angry…Confusion, frustration, despair and anger would soon find its expression in many forms, some through violent means initially aimed at what they see as injustice, moral decadence and religious bankruptcy within the domestic domain.”

In a nutshell, Mr. Maarif’s point is they – those who commit terrorism and deadly violence - are the victims.

Time and time again we have heard such excuses, such justifications and such diagnosis of the origins of terrorism. The former Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohammad, in his speech  at OCI conference on October 2003  – which many viewed it controversial -- said, “I will not enumerate the instances of our humiliation and oppression, nor will I once again condemn our detractors and oppressors.” His message is simply “we are victims, we are being victimized and there other who are villains.”

The rejoinder, no less, is our president, Mrs. Megawati. In her address at the UN General Assembly in New York on September 24, 2003, President Megawati Sukarnoputri has blamed the West for the global “climate of violence” that fosters terrorism. Megawati said, “…that once the major powers behave in a more just manner and make clear their impartiality in the Middle East, then most of the root causes of terrorism, perpetrated in the name of Islam - which in any circumstances cannot be justified - would have been resolved.”

All are in the same tune: there are victims – us, and there are villains - them. The root causes of terrorism, as the views highlight, are the injustice practiced by some other powers.

While those statements maybe politically correct to entertain their people, and to consciously or unconsciously delude their people of the real problems they are facing, the real consequence is far from correct. In fact, it is catastrophic.

To see this why, let’s focus on the notion that the root of terrorism is poverty and let’s also separate facts from fictions. This notion is the fundamental supposition stated by Mr. Maarif, to which many, if not hundred millions of people around the world, are buying without ever bothering to question its validity. The belief that injustice and oppression are the roots of terrorism, as coined by Mr. Mahathir and Mrs. Megawati, is essentially falling into the same category as terrorism is caused by poverty because injustice can be interpreted as deprivation of justice and oppression is deprivation of dignity.

What causes terrorism?

Let’s begin by understanding what terrorism is all about. Terrorism is perhaps the world’s worst crime ever invented by human beings. Its main purpose is to terrorize people, not animals. It has no regard on human’s life, even on its own members because they are willing to kill their own members just as they are so eager to kill others. But violence and killings are just the final products of terrorism. The most vicious and dangerous product is actually the “power” behind the violence and the killings. This “power” gives inspiration to, supplies energy to and drives the motivation of terrorists to commit their cruel acts.

When someone decides to work hard or to study hard, there must be some “power” that drives him to do that. Spending more time at work, bringing more money home, consuming more goods and services, and getting better grades are all the final products.  The real power behind the final products is the idea that inspires and motivates one to work or study hard. And this is also true for terrorism. Thus to focus on the final products of terrorism – violence and killings – is to miss the fundamental reason underlying the products or the root cause of terrorism.

The word root, according to the Eleventh Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, means the essential core, something that is an origin of quality or condition. The Dictionary gives an example of the usage of root:  the love of money – the idea -- is the root of all evil – the outcomes.

On the other hand, poverty is neither an idea nor a motivation. It is a condition, a state of life. It can be measured from several angles -- for instance by income levels, literacy rates, infant mortality rates, or other gauges of personal welfare. For people who have studied Statistics, this looks like a familiar case study of a set of states of the world versus a final outcome. This is what motivates Alan Krueger, a Princeton economist, joint with Jitka Maleckova, a Middle East specialist at Charles University in Prague, to conduct a statistical analysis that links poverty and terrorism. Studying specifically the terrorism in the Middle East, of 129 Hezbollah militants killed during the late 1980s and early 1990s, they found that they were more likely to be above the poverty line or to have secondary or higher education than the average person in Lebanon. 

The most interesting fact is their finding about the Palestine-Israel conflict. To see whether the poor and uneducated are particularly likely to support terrorist attacks against Israelis, Kruger and Maleckova analyzed opinion polls in Palestine. Their findings, contrary to the popular belief, do not support such a conclusion. And, when they looked at Jewish settlers who carried out attacks on Palestinians, those attackers were overwhelmingly well off. These findings are in line with past studies of terror.

As reported in Washington Post on May 21, 2002, an analysis of 350 terrorists identified in newspapers between 1966 and 1976, people who belonged to 18 groups such as Japan's Red Army and Turkey's People's Liberation Army, found that about two thirds had been to college. These facts blow apart the conception that poverty is the root cause of terrorism.

But perhaps the most damaging case to the belief that poverty is the root cause of terrorism is the facts that there are hardly any groups of people from the most impoverished and the most corrupt countries committing terrorism, let alone building an international terrorism and spreading the most lethal terrorism of all, suicide bombings.

Based on data from The Penn World Table for the year of 1998, all of the 15 poorest countries in the world, based on PPP-adjusted GDP per capita, are African countries (see Table 1).  And table 2 presents the 15 most corrupt countries in the world.

Table 1

15 poorest countries in the world

    Source: Penn World Table

Table 2

15 most corrupt countries in the world

   Source: German-based Transparency International

By relating the data to the list of terrorist groups exist in the world up to this day and then using a common sense, one can conclude that the notion of poverty and corruption causing terrorism is unfounded. And therefore, to say that unless the issue was tackled the lure of radicalism would remain, as proclaimed by Mr. Maarif, is misleading.

If the corruption and the poverty are the concerns, why wouldn’t terrorist groups demand a major improvement in the economic development and policy? If they were, we would have seen terrorism flourishing in Nigeria, Madagascar and Uganda, three of the world’s most impoverished and corrupt countries. Moreover, why don’t they use their financial resources to help the poor, instead of using them to destroy the lives of innocent people? And, most curiously, why don’t they go after the big corruptors in their own country?

Even the poorest people in the world, if they really believe that hurting and killing people are forbidden, will highly unlikely to commit terrorism. Very likely, they will steal others’ possessions, not murder others mercilessly.

That corruption and poverty must be tackled is no question. However, they must be tackled for different reasons other than combating terrorism, because terrorism is not rooted in corruption and poverty. They must be tackled for reasons of humanity, justice and dignity, not for reasons of power and domination.

One may point out to the genocide in Rwanda as an example of poverty-induced terrorism. But that was not rooted in poverty. It was driven by the quest for power and domination of Hutus over Tutsis. The quest for power and domination is the idea, and the killings or the genocide is the product.

The poisonous pills

So what is the root cause of terrorism? As we have seen, terrorism is not a reaction to economic hopelessness but is instead a violent expression of political dissent that tends to come from the upper or middle income and the better educated classes.

The very core reason of terrorism is the idea that it is permissible, justifiable, and it is not unlawful to hurt and kill people in order to realizing the ends. Embodied in this idea is the belief that human’s life is not the end, but it is a means to achieve domination or to achieve a grandeur yet groundless dream. Also, embodied in this idea is the belief that we are the victims and we are being oppressed.  The goal of terrorism is not to elevate the dignity of people, but to exploit the dignity of people in order to magnify their - terrorists’ -- existence.

It is evident that terrorism cannot completely be eliminated, no matter how sophisticated the weapons of high precision are employed. But it can be reduced to such an extend that it is no longer appealing to the youth to commit terrorism and to believe to what terrorist groups are claiming to be true. This can be done not by eradicating poverty and by reducing corruption, but by inculcating values that value life infinitely precious and by stimulating people to think beyond their current situation, and by convincing them that their childhood dreams – to be good people – can really be realized if they themselves respect their dreams. Also, this can be stopped by dumping hateful ideas, not by pretending or proclaiming selves to be victims. 

As I argue in A self-destructive play or a winning one, hate is inspired and energized by a perception that one is being victimized. In order to make people hate others so deeply one must make them believe that they are being victimized. They must feel that they are being oppressed and humiliated. Our history is full of abuses, exploitations and wars. A few European countries colonialized more than a half of the world decades ago. In the post World War II, the Western countries supported dictatorial regimes in under-developed and developing countries and benefited from those countries by making lucrative deals with the dictatorial or corrupt regimes, leaving the average people poor. As a result, many people in those countries view themselves as victims and the West, together with several Western-initiated institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank, are seen as predators.

Notwithstanding the bulks of rules, ethics and Constitution all over the globe, the world will never be a fair place to live.  Just as there is good and bad in everything, there are fairness and unfairness in this globe.  

And so, there is hardly any nation that can claim to be exclusively a victim of history. Most people have had experience as victims, either by unfair treatments or simply by inexplicable acts of others. And today, there are millions of individuals who are victims of any kinds of unfair and injustice treatments. There are nations which are also victims and used to be victims.

While we all essentially have been victims at some point in time, it is the follow-up action to the condition that really matters. And, while victims are usually suffered, it is the reaction to suffering that defines the destiny of any individual or entity including a nation. Feeding a victimhood game to the folks, therefore, is nothing more than supplying them with a poisonous fill that will suffocates their constructive mindset.

In a war against terror – which, set aside the method, presumably rational people would support rather than against it, playing a victimhood game is not only ineffective, in fact, it works against the war. The more frequent terrorists and their supporters hear that people, especially their leaders, claim they are being victimized, the more convinced them of their conviction that to destroy others is justifiable.

It is no doubt then that the war on terror is really a war on ideas, not on conditions, because terrorism is rooted in idea, not in action. Action is just the fruit of the idea. The war is won not by how many terrorists are killed, but by how many terrorists and their supporters are coming to an understanding that life is much more precious than ambition, opposition, and death.

Ours is an imperfect and problems-filled world. But to miss the beauty of life because of such a reality is the same as to embrace misery. Problems must not obstruct our view toward an optimistic future. Unfortunately, a blaming others game, as announced by Mrs. Megawati and others, are just doing the opposite. Instead of attacking problems, it ignores them. And instead of creatively searching for solutions, it views that the solutions are entirely in the hands of others.

No human being can attain a better standard of living only by blaming others for his/her condition. Also, no human being can advance to a better standard of living if he/she is only able to see others’ problems but fail to recognize his/her own.  Equivalently, no nation can advance to a higher level of civilization if the nation is dominated by blaming others attitude.

There are numerous messages hovering these days, online and offline, suggesting that the solutions to people’s problems are in the hand of others. This dangerous principle believes that by destroying other people, people would solve their own problems. Ultimately, the result is a perpetual killing which would lead to an inexplicable disaster to the whole world.  A blaming others game has been so pervasive these days that it becomes a main course to “solve” problems.

As I point out in Caution: A new kind of AIDS, this is a new kind of HIV which has been resurrected during the last few decades. Unlike the real HIV which destroys the body’s immunity system, this new virus – blaming others for our problems -- destroys human mind’s intelligence system.  It is called Human Intelligencedeficiency Virus which causes AIDS (Acquired Intelligence Deficiency Syndrome). It simply attacks human’s mindset. As a result, people who are infected with this virus would have difficulties in succeeding in life since their mindset are jammed to a certain pattern and not able to find creative and constructive solutions to their problems.

Once an individual got infected with HInV, the immediate effect is the individual does not believe anymore that his/her attitude does matter in any struggles in life. For the individual, all that matters is others’ attitude, and the roots of all his/her problems are other people’s attitude and actions. The individual becomes ignorant of the fact that his/her attitude is powerful more than anything else in shaping his/her future. The next effect is the individual would develop hatred toward others and finally this hatred would become a self-destructive weapon.

The HInV not only attacks individuals, it attacks nations.

Major obstacles

In a politically correct and destructive world, it is taboo to criticize the “victims”, the minority and the weak, but it is entirely acceptable to harshly criticize and condemn the “oppressors” or the “villains”. But the problem is how to distinguish between the real villains from the “villains” and the real victims from “victims”. We are living in a word where the real victims are often perceived as the “oppressors” and the real oppressors as the “victims”. It just depends on how you look at them. It’s just a matter of perspective. And it just depends on where you stand.

Picture this. A member of family X ruthlessly killed one of their neighbors. The police hunt the killer down; a harsh punishment is waiting for him. The story, both in media and in society, then becomes: the police are terrorizing the killer; the justice is killing the killer. For the killer’s family, the killer becomes a victim, not a ruthless killer. For majority of people in the society, the killer becomes a rebellious symbol against the police and the justice, a symbol that fascinates them. Meanwhile, the family whose a member of their own has been killed has to bury their loved one with a profound grief.  Some parts of the victim’s body could not be found. The body was too damaged. But only a few people who consider this family as a victim, limited to their extended relatives and some sympathetic neighbors.

The killer has killed the neighbor because the neighbor parked his luxury car next to the killer’s old and rusty bicycle. The killer’s family and other neighbors often talked that the rich people are bad, corrupt and don’t have a sense of humanity. In Mr. Maarif’s depiction:

“When some of these 'new rich' insist to send their children to best hospitals around the world, even when they catch a flu, millions of other parents can only pray and watch their children lying on the simple wooden beds, helplessly fighting to recover from all kinds of serious diseases due to malnutrition.”

 Suddenly, the real victim becomes a “villain” and the real villain becomes a “victim”. It is now a matter who thinks what. In a world when perception is reality, what one hears is what one thinks; what one thinks is what one believes; what one believes becomes what one is becoming – through their actions and conviction. For instance, if one believes that it is justifiable to kill others, one becomes a killer.

Today, not only we are living in politically correct and destructive world, we are witnessing a world inhabited by people who are so permissive to almost anything. It is a notorious relativism world. It is a relatively acceptable to rob others if they don’t share their possession with others. It is not entirely wrong to kill others if they don’t share the same perception with us. The above killer is relatively not guilty, depends upon which angle you look at him.

Perhaps this can explain why so many people have been killed during the last century, and little significant initiatives done to stop the killings. We have seen this in our modern times, especially during the decades of 90s and 00s. When more 800 thousands of people killed in Rwanda in 1994, many people thought that it was not relatively important to stop the genocide. Those lives were relatively not precious.

As it turned out, the Hutus’ hatred toward the Tutsis had been inflamed by RTLM (Radio Television Libres des Mille Collines) broadcasts. “The radio was a drumbeat calling on listeners to take action against Tutsis,” Judge Pillay said who, in December 2, 2003, sentenced Ferdinand Nahimana, 53, a founding member of RTLM, along with Hassan Ngeze, 42, owner and editor of the Hutu extremist newspaper Kangura both to life in prison.[i] The judge added, “RTLM spread petrol throughout the country little by little, so that one day it would be able to set fire to the whole country.”

One of the manifestations of a permissive attitude is silence. As Edmund Burke once said, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing." 

While the poisonous pills are so effective in persuading people to commit horror – it is an inspiration, relativism signals a public permission to commit violence. In both cases, the power of words plays -- constructive or destructive words.

When more than a hundred thousand of people have been killed in Indonesia during the last five years, including thousands of Timorese people, it is time for our leaders to comprehend the power of their words, especially the ones which significantly affect mindset development.

A pledge to our leaders

Revised: August 23, 2007

© 2002-3 The Prospect and The Indonesian Institute, All Rights Reserved.