Terrorism not justified – Mustapha Hamid

Information Minister Mustapha Hamid has condemned terrorism, indicating that it is “not justified”.

The Islamic scholar, who was contributing to a discussion on terrorism on Class FM’s World Affairs on Friday July 21, explained that violence is not acceptable whether the motivation is religious, ideological, economic, social, or political.

He told host Dr Etse Sikanku that the definition of terrorism is important as members of the armed wing of the African National Congress (ANC) in the Republic of South Africa, who led the fight against apartheid in that country and later came to be regarded as heroes, were once branded terrorists.

He also cited examples of incidents on the Africa continent where certain groups who were leading the course of independence for their countries were rather labelled as terrorists.

However, he was of the strong view that “no one should resort to arms or terror in order to make your point” as it is not acceptable.

On his part, the Ranking Member on the Foreign Affairs Committee of parliament, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, who was also a guest on the show, suggested new ways of dealing with terrorism across the globe including negotiations as the use of military force has not yielded the desired results, with more terrorists springing up every day.

“Just using force and thinking that you can identify key ringleaders [to deal with them will not work]. Now terrorism has metamorphosed and become free for all. They are using new technology and ICT has come to complicate matters,” he argued.

He said the reason why terrorism still exists is because we “appear to be doing the same thing and we want to expect different results”.

For him, “using the hardline approach will clearly not help and that is what they [terrorists] want, so there is a need for a new paradigm for us to come to a certain consensus and I will go for a total change in international relations and politics”.

“We have come this far and terrorism is thriving because of the old ways of wanting to use a military solution, wanting to use force and not really changing the sphere of international relations, how we have related to countries and pursued our interests and the people we have identified as enemies and how we will go after them no matter what, in the process we breed terrorism if we didn’t know that inadvertently that is what we were doing,” he told host Dr Etse Sikanku.

The Member of Parliament (MP) for North Tongu said the actions of nations and some individuals seem to be breeding more terrorists, noting: “We are only providing fertile grounds for these terrorist organisations to recruit, regroup and continue to create justification and continue with their reign of terror.”