Teach Them How to Love their Country

Tuesday, 12 June 2007
By Sabria S Jawhar

THE Ministry of Interior's efforts to combat terrorists have been recognized locally and internationally. These efforts are not limited to the military level where they recently proved they have the required capability to foil attempts to target the country's economic and security establishments. As for those few cases in which the terrorists could strike, the ministry's men managed to reach the culprits and bring them to justice.

At the intellectual level, the ministry has established a 130- member Guidance Committee to hold dialogues with what the Saudi government refers to as "deviant groups" so as to try to change their minds and lead them back to the right path.
The Guidance Committee consists of Islamic scholars, preachers and academics, who team up and work according to a preset program to rehabilitate detained suspects or convicts affected by the deviant group's ideology.

The committee claims to have accomplished a great victory by bringing back to the right path almost as many as 700 detainees who had wrong beliefs or destructive ideas.

The committee is divided into three subcommittees handling security, scientific and psychological affairs. Their work includes lecturing detainees on religious issues that they have doubts about or which are misinterpreted. Those lectures last for five weeks. Then they are tested and, if they pass, are given certificates. The detainees are also involved in one-to-one dialogues with qualified preachers who clear any confusion concerning religious issues. A team of psychologists and sociologists also talk to them and study their social and economic background.

These tremendous efforts should be applauded. However the question remains: are these enough to combat and uproot terrorism?

Saudi society is religious by nature. They listen to Imams at mosques and follow their advice. This fact had pushed the Saudi government to inspect the attitude of several Imams in mosques, in 2003, send about 1,000 Imams for retraining programs to promote religious moderation and repudiate violence.

But, unfortunately, we still hear from time to time, some Imams using violent language in preaching to youth, which brings us back to the same cycle and raises question: where does violence come from?

We rarely hear an Imam in his Friday sermon or at any other ceremony talk about the importance of loving one's country and protecting its property as a religious duty. Sometimes, it seems to me, they are very cautions and avoid talking about patriotism, as if there is a contradiction between patriotism and religion.

I believe that guidance and advice should relate patriotism to religion. The new generation has to learn how to love their own country and to consider that as part of being a Muslim. Youngsters have to know that having national pride or strong patriotism is not against Islam. On the contrary, it is the core of Islam. Imams in mosques should highlight this and appeal to the citizens' religious sentiments when they tackle terrorism or any other security issues.

They have to stop using that timid language of theirs when condemning terrorist acts as if they are doing it out of duty and not conviction.

Education should involve more with love of the country. Educators have to know that instilling patriotism is a practice, not a book for study and test.

We have to realize that we've already lost some of our kids by overlooking the importance of loving one's own land. They became victims of foreign ideology that made them forsake their own country as a strategy for fighting infidels. What mentality is this that believes targeting and destroying one's own country's economy is a holy war? If those people were taught in advance that Jihad is not being waged in their own country, that it is governed by very strict regulations and that it should be declared by their country's ruler, would they have done what they did to their country in the name of Jihad?

Watching the Saudi television interview with those arrested for the terrorist plot to attack oil facilities in the Kingdom, clearly reflects the importance of enhancing the patriotism in the souls of those kids. One of the terrorist-cell member's excuse of "uncontrolled jealousy" as the reason behind the plot or its possible consequence, is what we have to stop and think about. What jealousy are they talking about? And was it for the good of the country?

Simply, we have to teach them how to love and how to express it. Love is not a crime or a shame that we have to hide. Love for the country starts from home, mosque and schools.

Have we shown enough love at these places? Did we offer our kids a role model of how to love?