The real reasons behind bombings

IN the wake of the bomb attacks on London, a number of senior officials in Britain and in some other Western countries have asserted that the terrorists responsible for those heinous acts were motivated by a desire to destroy everything that Western civilisation “holds dear”, its individual freedoms, its democracy, its secular way of life. 

While al-Qaeda and its allies may be opposed to various aspects of Western civilisation, it is apparent from their strategies and their pronouncements that what has angered and incensed them is not Western democracy or Western freedoms as such, but Washington’s hegemony, reinforced by its close allies, and its adverse impact upon the Arab and Muslim world.