Greetings. I'd like to thank you for inviting me to attend the Canadian Parliament.
In fact, the world today is very occupied with counterterrorism, and it is obvious that many countries are contributing to the fight against terrorism in Iraq and Syria specifically.
Counterterrorism is currently focused on one group of terrorists: ISIL or ISIS. As for the rest of the terrorist groups in Iraq and Syria, it doesn't seem that anybody is confronting them. In my estimation, the problem is that we have a war against an armed group, but unless we all take the initiative and come up with a definition of terrorism—a legal, specific, and clear definition—this is not enough. Terrorism is not only the armed groups that are outside the law but also an ideology and a doctrine. It is obvious that the United States, as well as many other countries—approximately 60 countries—are bombarding ISIL, but there are thousands of mosques and other media like TV, radio, newspapers, and websites that continue to produce terrorists. What would push somebody—a young man who lives comfortably in America or Canada or Europe or anywhere else—to go and fight in Iraq or Syria? What would push a young man to go and commit a suicide operation in Iraq? What would push a young French man to go and conduct a suicide operation in Iraq or Syria? The motives are religious, cultural, and intellectual. This is why I say that terrorist culture and the jurisprudence and doctrine of terrorism are what produce terrorists who fight here or there. Unless we confront the terrorist ideology, we will not be able to stop the strong wave of terrorism that is attacking our world.
There are oil-producing countries that are also producing terrorism through their mosques, their institutions, their universities, and their media. The social culture is also producing terrorism in those countries. Those terrorism-producing countries are protected by the United States and its allies. So there's something that's not clearly understandable here. Why would America and its allies attack ISIL but protect the producers of ISIL? Why are they focusing only on ISIL, but they're leaving the Jabhat al-Nusra or the al-Nusra Front, which is the twin brother of ISIL? Why attack ISIL but overlook the Taliban in Afghanistan and Boko Haram? There are many names for one product that is Islamic terrorism. Unless we can specify and define what that terrorism is.... Not all Islam is terrorism, but there are cancerous points in Islam that have to be dealt with in order to stop the production of terrorism at its roots. Lastly, attacking those armed terrorists is not enough. We also have to define terrorism, to have a legal definition, and focus on intellectual, cultural, and religious terrorism in order to uproot it.
Thank you very much.