Paths of terrorism and questions of the “root” and “norm”

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It does not escape the scholars and historians of the sciences and their history, and of the phenomena, their roots, and their sources that grasping their roots and delving into their origins is one of the major tasks that took a long time to reach the maturity it has become in the fields of research and academies around the world.

With every wave of research depletion or analytical collapse, some brilliant minds emerge to develop research plans that trace each concept from its root in search of its documents and history, and then integrate it into the field of analysis to take its comprehensive exploratory cycle before the interested person reaches the appropriate “standard,” after which this topic is attributed to historical, intellectual, social, or psychological fields.

This happened in many fields that specialists seized upon to understand the “being” from which it emerged, and although this research took its cue in the previous centuries, specifically from the sixteenth century, in the twentieth century it would take a precise scientific, analytical, archaeological formulation, such as, for example, what Michel Foucault did with his documentary research into madness, prisons, asylums, and others.

In this space, we are interested in giving an example of his theory about “the birth of the clinic” because he restored the subject of the “standard” to its ruling, as health is the criterion for diagnosing disease and so on, and on the other hand because the book branched out into environmental aspects and infection, which are due to the transformation of the family into a part of the “state of nature” in which disease thrives, in addition to other themes that Foucault uses, such as the meanings of the organization of medicine and its development in favor of enlightenment and freedom. Just as there is a historical disease that is due to reality and law, There are other philosophical, intellectual, and superstitious diseases that are due to the “formative epidemic.”

Then Foucault tells us how the problem of medical training was not solved except by organizing education, and the implication of this is that illness and death provided more “lessons” in hospitals. Educational reform contributed to strengthening “forms of experience” in treatment, within the knowledge of the disease itself, but it is “more fundamental.” According to Foucault, “in the eighteenth century the system of education, as a system of qualification standards, became directly articulated with a theory that represents ideas and their interconnectedness.” The childhood and youth of things and people were charged with a mysterious power, which was to initiate the birth of the truth and bring it closer. Accordingly, the child became the master of the old on the grounds that true training coincides with the emergence of the true itself.

From this angle of Foucault, we can exploit his methodology in order to understand more accurately and soberly an equally pathological concept, by which I mean “terrorism.” Disease, according to Foucault, is “nothing but an aggregation of symptoms.” (The Birth of the Clinic - p. 138).

Pamphlets, ideas, and analytical loads have been striving to implement two basic blockades: The first: the siege in reality through security strikes and the development of clever educational policies to formulate a strategy towards a rational society, and the security strategy is integrated with the educational and educational issue. Many governments have excelled in developing this meaning and reaching the basic goal of rejecting terrorism, but events prove that terrorism has its tricks, methods and deceptions. The second, and more difficult, is the search for the “root” of terrorism. There is a difference in the claim to capture its root, for example, and it is a heated dispute between some traditional specialists and scholars, and between academics, philosophers and thinkers. Then the philosophers themselves are divided between other partial interpretations related to geography and history and not ending with convictions and interpretations.

However, establishing a “standard” for controlling the terrorist and other ordinary people within his society, law, and state has not yet been decided, and this is a dangerous indicator of the level of “theoretical fragility” in which those who are expected to have more precise and effective approaches are implicated, so that the phenomenon does not remain uncontrolled, threatening society, and renewing its ways in order to deceive the public sphere.

Conclusion; Although many countries have excelled in striking it security-wise and besieging it educationally and guidance-wise, the ball is now in the researchers’ court... to besiege terrorism theoretically. Without this level of audacity, the terrorist will return and repeat his crime whenever he finds a favorable opportunity. The terrorist is planning all the time to find a path to carry out the crime, and when our intellectual attack on terrorism is not violent, comprehensive, and overwhelming, they will, with all their aggression, brag about their half-successful operations, considering that all paths are available arenas for targeting people.

Quoted from "Al-Sharq Al-Awsat"