UN wants to bridge Islam-West divide. The same UN that can’t bring itself to define terrorism let alone confront it. 
 

    Sampaio told reporters at the UN headquarters in New York late Thursday that the four components, as presented to the organization’s Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, are education, the media, youth and migration.

It’s the same old wishy-washy Kumbaya pap so fond of by the liberal left. Promote dialogue and understanding (Can we talk?) and forging collective political will to address the world's imbalances (It’s the West’s fault).

But the UN does propose a ‘rapid-response’ mechanism to combat terrorism. A military response? Nope. A media response.

    "The media consists of the most powerful means to promote knowledge about other cultures, understanding and mutual respect," he said, adding that migration is "a natural bridge between diverse communities". According to a statement issued by the Alliance , the plan sets out a range of projects and initiatives which the alliance will support and help develop over the next two years.

They include a media fund to promote productions developed across cultural, religious and or national lines, a youth employment center aimed at increasing work opportunities for young people in the Middle East , and a project aimed at expanding international student exchange programs. In addition, the alliance stated it will establish a "rapid response media-based mechanism" to provide platforms for constructive debate during times of increased tensions around cross-cultural issues.

Talk, talk, talk and even more talk. Respond to terrorism incidents with words? And not one word about the ideological threat itself - Islamism. If the UN will not identify the true enemy to civilization, how on earth can it combat it?

The Alliance of Civilizations was created in 2005 through the initiative of Spain and Turkey and under UN auspices to try to tackle fear and suspicion, bridge divides and overcome prejudices and polarizations between Islam and the West.

How nice. Spain who surrendered to the terrorists after the bombings in Madrid and Turkey who is in a life or death struggle with a rising Islamist faction that seeks to turn the clock back on Turkey 100 years.

But there are those that not bamboozle by this UN tom-foolery. They know the real reason for terrorism in the Muslim world and know how to deal with it - and from an Arab no less.

    "In an article titled "How the Arabs Explain the Terror Phenomenon" in the Qatari daily Al-Raya, Al-Ansari criticized the ways in which the Arab world denies and ignores the phenomenon of terrorism, and refuted the political and socio-economic arguments justifying it.

    "Why has the terrorist violence increased? And why has it reached a level of such madness and barbarism? Why aren't we managing to deal with it and handle it? Why is there a rise in terror operations targeting innocents?

    "In my view, the [answer] lies in our inability to explain the phenomenon of terrorism, and to break it down into its structural internal causes and into the environmental elements that support its existence. [This inability] emanates from the following three main causes that are common in the Arab arena as explanations for terrorism:

    "The first is the discourse of denial... that is, exonerating Muslims from [any] accusation of [perpetrating] terror operations, and [instead] accusing their enemies - usually the Mossad and U.S. intelligence. An extensive sector of prominent clerics, intellectual elites, and the masses are still convinced that 9/11 was a Mossad or U.S. intelligence operation...

    "The second cause is the discourse of defensiveness, as manifested in repeated statements that terrorism has no religion, homeland or nationality, but is a transient virus that is alien [to the Arab world] - or that Islam is innocent [of terrorism].

    "The third cause is the discourse of justification, which is extremely common in the religious and media outlets. This discourse tries to link terrorism with political factors, international conflicts or internal socio-economic factors - saying that terrorism is the outcome of political repression by some regimes that strangle freedoms and are hostile to democracy or that terrorism is a response to American and Western injustices, to the policy of discrimination [against Muslims], to the blind pro-Israel bias, and to the global conspiracy against the Muslims…

Now there’s a man that gets it!

    "There are also those who excuse terrorism because of unemployment and poverty, or use as an excuse the spread of corruption, permissiveness, women's adorning themselves in public, [and women's] attaining political rights and being appointed to senior positions, which is considered perverse in the eyes of those [who excuse terrorism]."

The UN should stop listening to the elitists in Europe and America and pay attention to what’s being said by Muslims who get it.

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