OIC, UN Discuss Ways To Tackle Incitement To Terrorism

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) Tuesday began a three-day workshop at its headquarters here on the implementation on a United Nations resolution that aims to counter incitement to terrorism .

The workshop, which ends Thursday, is organized by the UN Counter-Terrorism Executive Directorate and the OIC along with international, regional and sub-regional organizations. Abdullah Alam, assistant secretary general of the OIC, said: “As terrorism is an abhorrent malady that seeks to destroy the fundamental ethos of human society, we are faced with a growing challenge in which the few proponents of incitement to terrorism who pursue an agenda of hate and destruction follow no faith and live by a dogma of violence, targeting the few who are willing to implement their agenda.” The OIC considers terrorism one of the most serious crimes and the workshop is an attempt to explore the ways and means of combating incitement to terrorism at its roots. The statement also explained how the international community is still debating on a consensus definition of terrorism .

Alam said: “There is surely unanimity that terrorism, both international and home-grown, poses a grave threat to international security and has to be countered collectively.” Resolution 1624 deals primarily with the issue of incitement to terrorism. However, the resolution created an obligation on member states of the United Nations and its organs to develop best practices in the field of national measures to prevent incitement, consistent with the freedom of expression. Despite the position of the OIC and Islam against incitement to terrorism and despite the common stand taken by all member states, the organization’s efforts face challenges from some motivated sections in societies who take advantage of certain terrorist acts carried out by a handful of errant and irresponsible individuals .

The workshop’s closed sessions is tackling issues such as facing and defining the challenge of incitement to commit terrorist acts. The third session speaker Tuesday, Wajdi Al-Quliti, director of the IT department at the OIC, told Saudi Gazette that his presentation was on cyber crimes, including the recent Internet attacks from the Anonymous group and their threat. Anonymous has been carrying numerous cyber attacks on governments, companies and agencies. The group does act out against cases where miscarriage of justice or corruption is concerned and done to symbolize opposition to one issue or another .

Al-Quliti said: “The problem with Anonymous group is that their locations and identities remain unclear. “Now, they are planning a huge attack on oil companies on the 20th of June as part of an online revolution against those companies. “This group uses Facebook, Twitter and YouTube and the problem is that you can’t locate them or know whether they are one big group, government agents or just individuals.” 

Al-Quliti argued that the file of combating cyber crimes is complicated since each side has its own interest. “Anonymous group’s hacking schemes have caused companies, agencies and government billions of dollars losses. The attack on Sony PlayStation accounts has cost the company $3.2 billion .”

However, there is no one international law to combat cyber crimes and each and every country has its own laws and rules, according to Al-Quliti. “If something happened in France and the threat came from here or America, for example, then you would have Interpol interfering but there is no one unified law because each has its interest that they want to protect.” Al-Quliti said that Saudi Arabia has to start taking extreme measures in combating cyber crimes and should implement laws. “If a cyber crimes law is not properly implemented, then emerging countries such as Saudi Arabia will suffer many loses and then these crimes would be very hard to tackle, especially as the country’s economy will be on the Internet .”