Why are there so many questions?

Like so many others, I need answers about what is going on, writes Khalaf Al Habtoor

A French flag flies outside The Petit Cambodge, one of the targets of terrorist attacks in Paris. (Laurent Cipriani / AP)

These days I find myself in a state of shock. We live in a world where barbarism, racism and bigotry are the new norm. Who would have thought that Paris, the City of Light, would ever go dark or that the army would be deployed in the streets. People have questions, but aren’t getting answers and that’s the problem.

I’m angry too that so many fingers in the West are pointing at Islam as the cause of all evils when my faith, one of peace and tolerance, has been hijacked. When I listen to statements from the mouths of American politicians I can’t believe what I’m hearing.

Donald Trump has vowed to close all mosques and force Muslim Americans to carry identity cards. Many of his Republican rivals are using the vilification of Muslims as a vote-getting ploy.

Likewise Britain, France and Belgium are planning the closure of certain mosques and community centres. Muslims are being asked to disassociate themselves from terror although they are the ones who’ve suffered most from terrorism over the years.

Elaine Morgan, a Rhode Island state senator, says that “the Muslim religion and philosophy is to murder, rape and decapitate anyone who is non-Muslim”. Presidential hopeful Ben Carson compares refugees to “rabid dogs”.

All of this hate on the part of politicians merely because fake Syrian passports were deliberately planted close to the bodies of suicide bombers in Paris.

In all honesty, I don’t know what to believe anymore. Like so many others, I need answers.

Why was ISIL permitted to expand over great chunks of Syria and Iraq? According to Fox News, declassified Pentagon documents dated 2012 obtained by Judicial Watch under the Freedom of Information Act “predicts the rise of ISIS and the establishment of a caliphate”.

Why did Barack Obama say last year that its rise took the US by surprise? Why was ISIL’s de facto capital Raqqa permitted to carry on business as usual under US-led coalition air strikes? And why, as was reported in the Washington Free Beacon and elsewhere, did politician Ed Royce complain that “the pilots come back to talk to us, they say ‘three-quarters of their ordnance we can’t drop, we can’t get clearance even when we have a clear target in front of us’?” Is he right?

Why did it take so long for the US to bomb convoys transporting ISIL’s stolen oil? Which states are buying that oil via third parties? Are there banks laundering the group’s income from oil, gold and stolen artefacts?

When the British terrorist “Jihadi John” and the head of ISIL in Libya, Wissam Najm Abd Zayd Al Zubaydi, were so easily pinpointed by surveillance satellites and assassinated, why is it that Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi is so hard to locate?

Which countries are supplying ISIL with heavy weapons?

Why did Israel open its hospitals to treat injured Al Qaeda and Nusra Front fighters, as revealed by the Wall Street Journal? Similarly, the Turkish newspaper Zaman quotes a nurse working in a hospital in Mersin saying she’s sick of treating ISIL fighters.

Who are the so-called moderate rebels the Obama administration is backing fighting alongside Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Al Nusra?

Why is it that Barack Obama and David Cameron shirk from branding the Muslim Brotherhood – the ideological forerunner of all Takfiri groups – as terrorists?

Early last year, an alleged British lobbyist for the Brotherhood, Anas Al Tikriti, whose father is head of the Muslim Brotherhood in Iraq, was invited to meet Mr Obama. In February, a Muslim Brotherhood judge was pictured making the four-fingered Rabaa sign at the state department following his meeting with officials.

When White House spokeswoman Jan Psaki was questioned by reporters she affirmed the US had no issue with the photograph, which is a poke in the eye to the Egyptian government.

This month, however, lawmakers in the US are pushing for a bill to be passed that would declare the Brotherhood a terrorist organisation.

I don’t have access to insider intelligence but let me put it this way. When the pieces of the jigsaw are put together something doesn’t quite fit. After Paris, the world is preparing to exterminate ISIL. France is co-operating with Russia to bomb them mercilessly.

Yet Mr Obama says they are contained and his strategy is working even as they announce New York and Washington are their next targets and are believed to be developing chemical weapons.

Charles Krauthammer opines in The Telegraph that while France is creating a coalition to destroy ISIL, Mr Obama “responded to Paris with weariness and annoyance. His news conference in Turkey was marked by a stunning tone of passivity, detachment and lassitude, compounded by impatience and irritability at the very suggestion that his Syria strategy might be failing.”Rather than falsely blame Muslims for the rise of ISIL, there may be other shoulders on which at least some of the blame should fall. It’s time they were exposed.

Khalaf Al Habtoor is chairman of the Al Habtoor Group