Viewpoints: Why Some Arab Immigrants Choose Terrorism

The people of New York, a city of immigrants, were appalled by the World Trade Center bombing. That act and the subsequently revealed plot of Islamic terrorists to assassinate and bomb set me thinking about why a few newcomers choose the path of violence.

Immigrants are often drawn to the USA by unrealistic expectations of opportunities. The converse view of the streets of America being paved with gold is the longing for the glorified abandoned homeland left behind. The idealization of the homeland may even contribute, in the most extreme cases, to the immigrant’s supporting terrorism or becoming a terrorist. A perfect homeland is certainly worth

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sacrificing to save. For this to occur, a number of conditions have to be met including the sense that the motherland is being ravaged by a foreign power. Thus, Irish Americans have long been major contributors to the Irish Republican Army and its terrorist activities. A number of Arab immigrants were convicted for the February 26, 1993, bombing of the World Trade Center in New York and implicated in a subsequent plot to terrorize New York for which Sheik Abdul Rahman was put on trial.

As absence makes the heart grow fonder of the land left behind, it also seems to heighten the rage towards the hated occupier of the homeland. Thus, it becomes easier to plot against the government one is sworn to destroy from a distance 5,000 miles removed from its police. A case in point is the World Trade Center bombing. It shocked Americans because they did not expect such a random act of violence and had not seen themselves as targets, in America itself, of Islamic extremists. Muslims, living in Brooklyn and Jersey City suddenly came under suspicion and suffered from vandalism reflecting the easily aroused suspicions and anger at the immigrant as dangerous alien.

Living in the free and economically well-off United States, Arab immigrants can easily feel guilt and remorse regarding the less fortunate brethren they have left behind. They literally feel strange, as strangers in a strange land. Many in the group feel alien and watched. A few of the newcomers give in to the temptation to create in reality that which they feel within. This is what happens when they join a terrorist party and consequently come under the suspicion of the police. The police scrutiny, which they have brought on themselves, diminishes certain internal conflicts. The sense of being alien and estranged is verified by the reality, and even though their objective situation may be much more precarious, they may suffer from less internal conflict. The world is clearly split into the idealized homeland and the denigrated, persecutory and satanic U.S.A. and Israel.

Such conflicts among immigrants are legion. This is why radical groups have often drawn much of their membership from immigrants. Ninety percent of the membership of the small American Communist Party of the 1920s were in foreign language speaking sections which did not even conduct their business in English. This ninety percent membership in the Communist Party represented but an infinitesimal proportion of any particular immigrant group.

The strain of coming to America and from a culture with radically different values can be enormous. It helps to explain why many immigrants disparage the new culture as they try to hold onto values of the old one. Violent acts sometimes occur, as in the case of a Palestinian, married to a Brazil born woman, who in 1989 killed his 16­year­old daughter, in the words of one of the St. Louis jurors, “just because she wants to be an American teenager.” The girl, named Palestina (Tina to her American friends) in honor of the homeland, was stabbed to death by her father whose house was wire­tapped because of his terrorist activities on behalf of the same (not yet independent) country. Sometimes a new generation must be born to escape these conflicts.

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