TUNIS
Ahmed Raissouni, the deputy head of the Qatar-based International Union for Muslim Scholars, has said that the current political violence in the Arab region was a response to "violent counterrevolutions" to the Arab Spring uprisings.
"The initial gains of the Arab Spring as a peaceful political movement have undermined Al-Qaeda and other violent groups," Raissouni, who formerly led Morocco's influential Al-Tawhid wa Al-Islah Islamist group, said in an interview with The Anadolu Agency.
"But these revolutions faced a setback such as the military coup against democratic legitimacy in Egypt and the excessive violence in repressing Syria's peaceful protests," he added.
Raissouni said that security crackdowns and counterterrorism legislation would not suffice in eradicating "terrorism" in the Arab world.
"Effective resistance to terrorism stems from eliminating its root causes," the scholar said.
"The rise of some current [Arab] regimes to power against the people's will has left a strong sense of frustration which is shared between those who end up adopting violence and those who do not."
Egypt has been dogged by instability since the military ouster of elected Islamist President Mohamed Morsi in mid-2013.
Egyptian authorities have launched a relentless crackdown on dissent which has largely targeted Islamist supporters of Morsi, leaving hundreds dead and thousands thrown behind bars.
The government accuses Morsi supporters, specifically Morsi's decades-old Muslim Brotherhood group, of carrying out numerous deadly attacks on security personnel in the Sinai Peninsula and other parts of Egypt.
The Brotherhood, which was designated a "terrorist organization" by the Egyptian government in late 2013, emphatically denies the allegations, saying it is committed to purely peaceful modes of activism.
