Iraqi Reporter on Paris Jihad: ‘This Is Our Terror, We Are Responsible’

JERUSALEM –  In response to Friday’s terror attacks in Paris, Adnan Hussein, executive editor of the Iraqi daily Al-Mada, published a sharp rebuke titled, “This Is Our Terror, We Are Responsible,” MEMRI reported.

The author asserts that all Muslims – Sunnis and Shi’ite – must hold themselves accountable for the terrorism that is spreading throughout the world. “We cannot shake off our responsibility for the new and terrible terror attack that recently struck Paris, the French capital. We, the Arabs and Muslims, cannot renounce our direct role and our close connection to the terror attacks that have been flooding all the countries of the world, including our own countries, for two decades or more.”

Hussein blamed the media, mosques and school curricula for inciting extremism and called upon Arabs and Muslims to “change the way religion is presented from the root.”

“The religion [presented] in our curricula, universities, mosques and husseiniyyas [Shi’ite places of worship], and on the radio and television stations, is a barbaric religion characterized by beheadings and bloodshed, and which incites to steal, usurp, enslave, and rape,” said Hussein. He further condemned Muslim schools and universities for indoctrinating young Muslims with the belief that Islam is the “best and most glorious of nations … whereas others are people of falsehood, infidels who belong in hell and are doomed to hellfire, whose killing is permissible, and whose property and wives are ours for the taking.”

The article ended by chastising the lack of moderate Muslim voices. “At best, [compassionate Islam’s] voice is feeble and heard almost by nobody, especially among the oppressed new generation that is marginalized and whose humanity is being compromised by poverty, rejection, and injustice, and by the crazy curricula and fatwas.”