The media’s obsessive focus on the Israel-Palestine conflict obscures the ubiquity of jihadism in the Middle East

Media's obsessive focus on the IsraelPalestine conflict obscures the broader picture of the ubiquity of jihadism in the Middle East .

Al-Qaeda offshoot Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) has controlled much of Syria ’s Idlib province for nearly ten years .

In 1990 , just five percent of civil wars worldwide involved jihadist groups; by 2017 , this figure had risen to over forty percent .

Jihad also keeps continuing to bubble up in Libya , Egypt , Afghanistan , Iraq , and across the region.

Al-Qaeda , ISIS , Hamas , and HTS , which all emerged from the Muslim Brotherhood , are not a series of random or impulsive kneejerk responses to oppression by a mindless group of desperate victims.

Jihadists constantly invoke past Western interventions and failures of various secular Arab governments as proof of a conspiracy to suppress and degrade Islam .

Jihadism is a doomed endeavour, while its proponents not only victimised religious minorities, but even rejected fellow Muslims .

Pan-Islamic or pan-Arab dominance is not going to work for the Middle East , writes Peter Bergen .

Islam is not the only religion in the region, and Arabs are not only local people who deserve freedom and self-determination.

We cannot create unity by forcing our rule upon people who do not want to be subjugated.