After coming back from Spring break we touched on another topic of spring: The Arab Spring.
Today we had our second guest speaker who came to talk to us about the topic of Radical Islamic groups. A couple of groups that were mentioned in the talk were Al-Qaeda, The Muslim Brotherhood, and of course Isis.
If there was anything that I have taken away from the lecture were a couple of answers to the questions "How do these groups get their power? How do they gain the support of the people?" I found the answers to these interesting because there are not only the ones mentioned in class, but there could be a whole lot more.
In the book that we had to read before the lecture, Understanding Arabs , it states that some of the reasons that people join these radical groups are because they seek purpose, excitement, or status. This was clearly expressed in our lecture. In our talk, Dr. Anouar Boukhars, our guest speaker, talks about how the radical groups exploit grievances that the citizens feel. He talks about how the groups are Sunni and they have faced many failures (Socialism, various forms of nationalism, etc.), he continues with that they are a majority with a minority complex. They feel that they are disposition and have been deprived of their fundamental rights. So, groups like Al-Qaeda and Isis fill this void that is there.
Another take away is that although we know there is a problem there has been no attempts to get to the root of the problem. It is hard to try to stop groups like Isis and Al-Qaeda from emerging and growing, because even though they can be gone, there will always be the idea that is there. There will still be civil wars and grievances that follow if the root of the problem is not tackled and radical groups feed off of them.
Image Source: en.thegreatmiddleeast.com/2016/11/how-much-is-the-arab-spring-cost-for-the-region/