Of late, a new canard has gained currency through repeated news that the root causes of the terrorist attacks of Sept 11 are attributable to Israelis-Palestinian conflict that serves as a continuous source of inflammation of Muslim sentiments and anger.

The root causes of Sept 11 terrorist attacks cannot be so easily simplified and explained away.

In a 1998 fatwa (religious ruling) issued by Osama bin Laden jointly with militant Islamic leaders from Egypt, Osama himself articulated his main grouses were the United States' protection of the House of Saud with marines near Islam's holiest of places, plundering the oil wealth of the Arabian peninsula, propping up several Muslim elites and humiliating the rest including Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi peoples. Israel's survival (guaranteed by the United nations) appeared a stronger reason than the status of the peace process of which America is accused of siding Israel.

On the other hand, Palestinian President Yasser Arafat himself condemned the Sept 11 aircraft attacks as a ''terrible act'' and, besides offering to donate blood for the victims, further said he would help track down those responsible if asked by the Americans. Radical Palestinian groups, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine and the spiritual leader of the Islamist militant group Hamas all denied connections with the attacks.

If it were not the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, another point of view amongst adherents of Samuel Huntington's Clash of civilisations holds that the root cause lies in the exclusivist worldview of fundamentalists and their disaffection for secularism, and modernity of the West epitomised by the United States.

Extreme fundamentalists are said to view western culture as materialistic, corrupt, decadent and immoral.

Others see the provocation as coming from the United States or the West's geopolitical intrusions into affairs of Muslim countries especially in the Middle East, and for the sake of oil, gas and other energy interests, propping up unpopular and repressive puppet governments.

Islamic militancy had also long been active in Algeria opposed to the military government viewed as being propped up by previous colonial master, France. On Christmas Eve 1994, four Algerian Islamic militants hijacked Air France Flight 8969 on the tarmac of Marseilles's Marignane Airport on apparently what, according to passengers' accounts, might well have been a suicidal mission to crash the plane in Paris had they not been killed by French Gendarmes commandos in a raid ( Times Jan 9, 1995).

There are a few reasons why Islamic militancy is viewed more prominent.

First, the perpetrators defined their actions under the name of Islam. They are viewed by most peaceful Muslims as having hijacked the religion.

Secondly, they may arise from ranks of social isolation and political or economic desperation. Being politically weak or frustrated and unable to exert their grievances through conventional political or military means, militants will be spawned and used by those with political agenda to perpetrate terrorists' actions as the only effective weapon. Terrorist acts are assuaged by claims of religious sanction such as appeals to ummah and jihad construed by those who desire to manipulate the discontented and the angry for their own political agendas.

Thirdly, terrorist acts by Islamic militants are also caused by the perception that their targets and victims (which like the United States are states instead of individuals) are equally terrorist in behaviour and they get their just deserts.

For examples, in 1986, the United States bombed two Libyan cities in retaliation for suspected Libyan involvement in a terrorist attack at a Berlin discotheque in which two American GIs were killed. More than 60 civilians were killed in the retaliatory bombing, including Libyan leader Muammar Qadaffi's baby daughter. (The problem is that the United States resorted to such "terrorist acts" because it thought that Libya itself - and Gaddafi - were terrorist when in 1988, Libyan agents allegedly blew up a Pan Am jet over Lockerbie, Scotland, in retaliation for the US strikes against Libyan cities).

Many of the world's most notorious terrorists were once trained by the CIA as part of the "Great Satan's" efforts to undermine leftist governments in Cuba, Nicaragua, or Afghanistan. In the 1960s, right-wing Cuban exiles were organised by the CIA to attack inside Cuba that killed many civilians.

During the 1980s, the United States similarly sponsored and armed right-wing Nicaraguan exiles into an armed force that attacked civilian targets inside Nicaragua.

Washington's present air strikes in Afghanistan against terrorist camps that have long been abandoned, produce more casualties amongst civilians than terrorist or Taliban militia.

Repressive Islamic regimes also commit repression, which by reason of their support by the United States, whether for reasons of oil or other strategic considerations, is deemed as if the sponsor itself is committing the repression since it is notorious for fighting through proxies by use of supply of arms and money. Being perceived as a state terrorist, the United States provides the excuse for the other side to so respond in a like terrorist manner.

Whilst this viewpoint may only explain attacks on the United States and the Western interest, they do not, however, explain other manifestations of militancy for or against a myriad of causes that have nothing to do with the United States, the West or the Israelis-Palestinian conflict.

For examples, in the Philippines, Abu Sayyaf group kidnap both Muslims and non-Muslims tourists alike and fight for a separatist autonomous Muslim state in the South. And even in Malaysia, the prime Minister alleged that militant groups are out to overthrow the government that has just recently been proclaimed an "Islamic state". It was alleged that Malaysian Militant Group (KMM) intended to set up an Islamic country through the union of Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. In 1981, militant assassins gunned down Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in 1981 in hopes to bring Islamic rule to Egypt.

As your Matahati column writer Mazeni Alwi had pointed out in 'Sept 11's challenge to Muslims' (Nov 11), the root causes as far as these instances are concerned lay in radicalisation of Islamic movements - and terrorism, like it or not, had become a Muslim problem according to Ziauddin Sardar in the Observer recently, and Salman Rushdie in the Guardian .

A denial of this and the attribution of terrorism to American bias for Israel and its foreign policy may score some political votes but basically does not help elucidate this complicated and serious problem of terrorism.

So, in summary, what is the root cause of terrorism? It depends on how one defines terrorism. If terrorism is, as defined in the Oxford Dictionary, the use of violence such as bombing, shooting, kidnap to obtain political demands or achieve political objectives, the complication is that even the US can broadly be viewed as guilty of it except that being a superpower and a state instead of cells of individuals willing to go to extreme, the United States, more often than not, escapes being branded such and is in the position to brand others instead.

There is however no one root cause of terrorism but many causes as above discussed but underlying all is the human tendency to use violence, and often to use religion to incite violence, to attain political objectives.

Though terrorism may in popular perception figure more prominently amongst Islamic militants, it is not their exclusive preserve when worldwide there are other terrorist groups - Red Army in Japan, Basque in Spain, IRA's terrorists of Ireland, Tamil Tigers of Ceylon including states (whether Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and even the United States depending on definition).

Violence as a means then must be eschewed if terrorism is to be reduced.

For a start, terrorist acts cannot be rewarded by the world's addressing and conceding to the legitimacy of terrorists' grouses for to do so will appease and encourage further terrorist acts by those who desire their objectives met by such violent means.

Even if the Palestinian problem were resolved and US' support for the House of Saud withdrawn, can there be any assurance that militants will not pick on other new issues of discontent and demand compliance backed by threats of terrorism?

A terrorist's ends (whether legitimate fair or otherwise) cannot be justified by the terrorist's means to attain such ends or else civilisation itself will be blackmailed.