First the Mariott Hotel bombing in Jakarta, then the UN compound in Baghdad, and the bombing of a bus in Jerusalem. In the space of weeks, Muslims have captured the headlines again, but as always, for the wrong reasons.

Yet, each incident needs to be seen in the right perspective. Many Muslims must have recoiled in shame at the bombing of the UN headquarters Baghdad, which seems to have specifically targeted a seasoned and highly regarded UN diplomat.

Even if this is no more comforting to know, at least the Baghdad bombing was not carried out in the name of Islam and Muslims.

While the bombings in Jakarta and Jerusalem were both deplorable and shameful, the underlying motive and the circumstances that drove the perpetrators to commit such acts are not the same.

One was driven by religious fanaticism that sees the West as a monolithic entity, the hateful enemy and oppressors of Muslims world wide - therefore, anything that hurts them or their interests and symbols is fair game.

The other is the outcome of decades of injustice, humiliation and hopelessness in a grossly uneven conflict laden with religious symbolism between two peoples over a land.

I am not sure if my optimism is misplaced, but I have a feeling that the hotel bombing in Jakarta probably signals the beginning of the end of al-Qaeda inspired global terrorism in Southeast Asia, not least because of intensified surveillance and more co-ordinated intelligence services that have seen the capture of suspected terrorists.

There has also been the realisation among Muslims, however belated, that such acts of terror are abominable in the eyes of Islam, with the victims mainly our own people.

Muslim scholars no longer hesitate to refer to this tiny band of extremists on the margins of the community as terrorists, and the iconoclasm of Osama bin Laden among Muslim youths is fast wearing off.

But the suicide attack on the bus in Jerusalem - whose victims included children - has at once shattered the fragile truce between Israel and the Palestinian Islamists. This is not something that will go away unless the two sides and their large body of backers and supporters sincerely wish for a workable, peaceful solution.

I presume not a few Muslims who are sympathetic to the Palestinian cause both on moral and religious grounds have found it difficult to accept the popular Muslim argument that "suicide bombings" are "martyrdom operations", especially when children are also targeted as victims.

This euphemism seeks its legitimacy largely from a particular assumption of the nature of Israeli society today, which started out as colonisers of Palestine after World War II.

Non-Muslims who insist that the intractable Middle East violence can only be blamed on the Palestinians, form their opinion based on passive, casual absorption of mainstream, US- dominated discourse whose interests happen to converge with those of Israel, rather than from a conscious, objective study of the origins of the conflict and an understanding of current realities of Palestinian life as an occupied and colonised people.

Political violence

Today we would like to think nobody should resort to violence to settle a dispute between peoples and nations. Violence in any form is ugly and very much undesirable.

Yet affairs between peoples are such that, no matter how terrible and heart rending violence is on the individual victims and their families, it is often made inevitable by the intransigence of players in the conflict.

The oppressors, be they colonialists, an occupying force or repressive central governments, are often deluded by their sense of omnipotence and arrogance. They push the oppressed one step too far, and the spark is ignited in the latter to recover their liberty and dignity, often by equally violent means.

However much we may object to political violence, in many parts of the world, it sadly still remains a means to correct colonial-type injustice. What we need is to curb its excesses and define its limits.

Before going further, I would like make a reference again to Camus who had something to say on this. Camus, by force of his passionate crusade against the death penalty and political violence, had at times been accused of being a sentimental pacifist.

From the book discussed previously in this column 'Rflexions Sur le Terrorisme', Camus responded to an article in the magazine Caliban in 1948 that criticised his position as "pacifist" based on his series of articles " ni victimes ni bourreaux " (neither victims nor executioners)" and

He wrote: "I believe that violence is inevitable, I have learned that from the (Nazi) occupation years... I will not say that we have to eliminate all violence, which is in fact desirable, but utopian.

"But in a world where one can justify terror, we need to impose a limit on violence, keeping it within certain sectors when it becomes inevitable, curtail its terrifying effects and prevent it from unleashing all its fury." (First response to Emmanuel d'Astier de la Vigerie, from 'Reflexions').

As Third Worldism lost its glory and the world recoiled in embarrassment at aging freedom fighters-turned-dictators - and the politics of liberation were suddenly no longer shackled by the ideological constraints of the Cold War - the moral dimension has rightly gained currency in today's discourse over that of violent confrontation.

The white minority of South Africa could have suffered the same fate as the French settlers of Algeria had both sides resorted to violence without limit, ruling out any possibility of reconciliation, reparation and peaceful co-existence.

The ANC succeeded in dismantling apartheid not by terrorising white South Africans (although some on extremist fringe did resort to terror tactics both on whites and blacks) but by winning the moral argument, appealing to the conscience of the world's public opinion.

At present, the world's public opinion that carries most weight happens to be the civil society of mature Western democracies, the very society where the white South Africans originated.

Misuse of religion

In a way, the Israel-Palestine conflict has many things in common with the colonial experience of Algeria and South Africa.

The mass migration of people from Europe took the most fertile lands from the indigenous people, drove them off their towns and villages, ruined their way of life and traditional economy, and turned them into third class non-citizens with no rights nor dignity.

The distinction however is that the Jews who migrated to Palestine were victims of the Nazi-led Holocaust as well as centuries of western anti-Semitism.

The Israel-Palestine conflict is also made more complex by Zionism's mischievous use of religion as a basis for the creation of Israel, igniting a reaction among the world's Muslims to see this as a religious war between Muslims and Jews.

In the course of the realisation of the Zionist project, the Palestinians - the victims of the victims - have suffered unspeakable brutalities and violence, dispossession, and have been forced to live in refugee camps for two generations with no hope in sight for the end of their misery.

Many sympathetic commentators understand fully well that, in the face of such desperation of and hopelessness, young Palestinians are driven to suicide bombings/martyrdom operations as the only recourse to justice, but this is not to be confused as justifying these acts.

But this is unfortunately a minority view, flanked on one side by a lack of understanding of the conflict, and therefore susceptible to pro-Israel propaganda, and on the other by overwhelming sentiment of Islamic fraternal sympathies that quickly turned into a religious populism that views an entire people as its enemy.

Those whose opinion is easily shaped by dominant Western discourse without reasonable understanding of the history of the Middle East conflict tend to hold the view that the Palestinians are an inherently violent and irrational people because they are Arabs and Muslims, bent on driving Jews into the sea and wiping Israel off the map.

Israel is projected as the only democratic and civilised nation in the Middle East surrounded by hostile Arabs, while the sinister record of Zionist crimes are kept well hidden from them.

Only the Palestinians are terrorists. Terror carried out by men in military uniform does not constitute "terrorism". This is unfortunately the dominant view among non-Muslims as the cultural, political and economic hegemony centred in Washington is wedded to the interests of Zionist state.

Staggering odds

But the perspective of the Muslim world is no more edifying, afflicted as it is by the same unwillingness to see the conflict with historical and moral objectivity.

Especially after the catastrophic Arab defeat in the Six Day War of 1967, the Muslim world's attitude towards Israel has been one of total rejectionism (this may have been valid and possible in 1948), spurred on by a populism of a religious war fed by fantastic Jewish conspiracy theories rather than one built on rational and moral reflection.

From this distorting perspective, all Jews are the enemies of Muslims and any method is legitimate including "terrorism", and this is really a mirror image of the Zionist perspective on Palestinian Arabs.

While the creation of Israel - through the machinations of European imperial powers and the US in collusion with world Zionism - was morally non-legimate, it is today unrealistic for Muslims to be deluded that we could force Israel out of existence by driving all Jews out of Palestine.

The mathematical odds are just staggering. The Zionist state is supported militarily, politically and economically by the world's hyperpower whose interests are to ensure Israel's survival at all costs. At the same time, there is the impotence and hypocrisy of Arab and Muslim regimes towards Israel.

In the end, Muslim rejectionism is not much more than just popular sentiment and impotent posturing. When Israel tightens its repression in response to suicide bombings/martyrdom operations, it is the Palestinians who suffer while the rest of us helplessly look on.

One positive outcome from the realisation that Muslims have to finally "deal" with the gratuitous violence of al-Qaeda-inspired terrorist acts is that the Muslim world might be softening its attitude of total rejectionism as an unviable objective and to question the tactics of violence without limit.

In a surprising move, Hamas, the Islamist organisation synonymous with the Intifada and suicide bombings/martyrdom operations agreed to a truce.

This was seen as a glimmer of hope for the road-map to peace, which spoke of accepting two states existing side by side based on 1967 borders. This has, however, broken down with the current escalation of violence.

Suicide bombings

Aware of the damage inflicted on Islam by global terrorism, at least Muslims are deliberating on the question of legitimacy or otherwise of suicide bombings, something that we have always shied away from previously.

In a recent document issued by the European Council for Fatwa and Research that convened in Stockholm in July, Muslim scholars argued on the legitimacy of 'Martyrdom Operations' (otherwise known as 'suicide bombings' in mainstream discourse).

It advanced the argument that every Israeli who is past childhood is a reservist in the army, that "Israeli society is a society of invaders, and those who are invaded have the right to fight the invaders with all means at their disposal... and send them back to the homes from where they came...".

Another major argument is that "the entire domestic front, including professionals, labourers and industrialists, stands behind the fighting army, even if it does not bear arms...".

There are many weaknesses to these arguments. Like any other society, Israeli society is much more complex than assumed. Second and third generation Israelis are there by virtue of an accident of history and many would probably prefer to live in the West if possible.

It is no more possible to drive all Jews out of Palestine as it was to drive all whites from South Africa.. The more viable solution is reconciliation and reparation even if this means admission of defeat, as opposed to rejectionism.

Like a small proportion of South African whites who opposed apartheid, there is a small but significant Jewish voice within Israel that actively seeks peaceful co-existence with a Palestinian state. They recognise the common values of humanity that Palestinians are equally deserving of rights and dignity.

It is thus difficult to accept the blanket legitimacy given to martyrdom operations. Even if violent Jewish extremists in illegal settlements are considered belligerents, the unintended targeting of children or unarmed civilians in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv raises a difficult moral conundrum.

The willingness to interrogate ourselves on the question of violence in the politics of liberation, and an unwavering commitment to moral principles are crucial in the struggle against the racism and inhumanity of Zionism.

As apartheid was not defeated by endless violence and black racism, reciprocating the Zionists should not be an option.

Self-examination

To tie things up, we may be initially willing to concede that violence in the struggle against oppression and injustice may be at times inevitable, and that it has been shown to work by the Hizbollah in driving the Israeli army out of Southern Lebanon.

However, on the question of martyrdom operations/suicide bombings, we need to interrogate ourselves whether the "evitability" of such violence has been fully exhausted.

And if we answer in the affirmative, what distinguishes les meurtriers delicats (delicate killers/assassins) from the terrorists?

This self-questioning is crucial. For, apart from the seemingly insurmountable odds of a military victory, the world today - unlike during the era of decolonisation - is less warm to freedom fighters that seem undiscriminating in their methods, especially when children and unarmed civilians become targets.

And this is really my whole point, that Muslims - with our confining, exclusivist religious perspective which borders on populist rejectionism that hints of violence without limits - have always ignored the importance of the universalist moral argument and of winning over the world's public opinion.

Going back to the Algerian war , the FLN suffered many military defeats, but its victory was political. The FLN divided Algeria into to districts or wilaya , each which had its own command structure, field of operations and fighting forces.

The seventh wilaya was metropolitan France itself. The idea is that given French military superiority, it would be crucial to win as much opinion and gain as much support from French civilians.

And this proved to be a significant factor in the Algerian victory, which was not military but political.

Influential French public figures were won over to the Algerian side, even though as French citizens they were expected to oppose the insurrection defying French colonialism (from 'The Other Wilaya', in 'The End of the Peace Process, Oslo and After' by Edward Said).

Other than the anti-apartheid movement, the importance of the moral argument and winning over the world's public opinion were equally crucial in the Vietnam War and Black civil rights movement.

Given that the scale of inhumanity that Zionism has inflicted on the Palestinians is far greater than apartheid on South African blacks, and that American taxpayers have been subsidising Israel's existence as a state and a military power, it is a wonder that we are unable to effectively harness the moral argument especially in the West.

We may cynically argue that entrenched Western prejudice against Islam may militate against the success of political persuasion in the manner of the anti apartheid movement, but the massive popular opposition worldwide against the US-led coalition's invasion of Iraq proved that many people still believe in a universal morality if they have the correct information and understanding, regardless of what their governments tell them.

I think our exclusivist religious perspective which includes justifying bombing operations that also targeted non-combatants and children is a formidable barrier that frustrates universalisation of support for the Palestinian struggle.