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In a speech to the parliament on November 11, 2014, the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, said that regional terrorism stems from the Arab regimes dragging the peaceful movements of their people into bloodshed.
Following are excerpts from the speech, which aired on the Qatari Al-Rayyan TV channel:
Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani: Our region is undergoing a dangerous phase, involving crises in many of the countries in the region, and first and foremost, the failure of the peace negotiations to resolve the Palestinian issue, and the continued policy of occupation and settlement in Jerusalem and the West Bank, as well as the siege on Gaza.
As for the other major crises, they stem from the dragging of the peaceful movements of the people in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, and Libya into blood-soaked conflicts, the responsibility for which lies with the forces that rejected the path of reform, and the peaceful and gradual transition [of power]. They confronted the peoples with weapons. This is coupled with the increasing danger of terrorism and extremism, which threatens to lead to catastrophic implications.
As I have said before, terrorism and extremism cannot be dealt with by aerial bombardments. This is true militarily, as well as politically and socially. It is imperative to get rid of the causes for the creation of social environments conducive to extremism. One of the most important of these causes is the unprecedented violence practiced by the Syrian regime and by some of the militias in Iraq. Any policy for fighting terrorism in Syria and Iraq that refrains from taking this into consideration is a policy of crisis management, lacking a strategy.
Let me emphasize here that with regard to religious terrorism and extremism, which is detrimental to religion and society – we totally and categorically reject it, regardless of one's analysis of its causes and the ways to deal with it.
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