Moroccan Author Abdelilah Belkziz: The Jihadi Groups Were Born from the Womb of Our Society, the West Only Uses Them

Moroccan author and researcher Abdelilah Belkziz said that contrary to the "common narrative" that the Jihadi movements were created by America and the West, these Jihadi groups are a "local product," created by our educational system and political culture, "which is based on exclusion and on the suppression of liberties." Belkziz, who serves as secretary-general of the Moroccan-Arab Forum, called for an "reexamination of our political, social, cultural, economic, existential, and educational circumstances." He was speaking on Sky News Arabia on December 29, 2017.

Abdelilah Belkziz: According to the common narrative, these [Jihadi] movements were created by America and the West, in order to drown our societies in problems. In response to that narrative, I said that these movements are a local product. They were created by us, by our society, by our educational and school systems. They were created by the destruction of our economy and society, and by our failure in development. They were created by our policies of marginalizing and excluding the productive forces in society. They were produced by our political culture, which is based on exclusion, on the suppression of liberties, and so on.

"These groups, which we call 'extremist,' 'takfiri,' or 'terrorist,' did not drop out of the blue... They did not emerge in a vacuum... They were born from the womb of these societies, and from the errors of these societies and their political regimes. We must muster enough courage to say that the disgrace that has emerged from our society requires us to pay attention to the causes of its creation, and to treat them. Unless we conduct a comprehensive reexamination of our internal circumstances - our political, social, cultural, economic, existential, and educational circumstances... Unless we confront all these problems, we will not be able to put an end to the harm caused to our societies by these phenomena. There is no doubt that the West uses these [movements] to serve its interests, but it is not the West that created them. We created them and left them to those who used them in their war against us."