We know they are opportunistic, thriving in the midst of social upheaval and
political turmoil, giving purpose and leadership to the disillusioned,
disaffected and forgotten. While history will judge whether the Middle
East’s own turbulent events of 2011 were the equivalent of a Berlin of 1989
or the Petrograd of 1917, one thing is clear – where state paradigms
collapse, into the vacuum extremist ideology is more likely to come.

They spread their ideological message through a multitude of channels, old and
new, from word of mouth, to proclamations from self-anointed pulpits,
through to the wholesale embrace of the digital age. And in the Middle East
itself, satellite channels unseen by Western audiences and free of either
its restrictions or regulation, broadcast, with far greater impact than the
internet, an almost continuous message of intolerance and venom to the
ignorant and the susceptible.

So, while we grapple with the conceptual, practical and legal protections of
media regulation and online freedom, they ruthlessly exploit these platforms
to sow hatred and showcase evil.

Ultimately, we face a new-world foe, one that while demonstrating many of the
practices of the 17th century also pursues a strategy of the 21st. We will
not be able to address them through old world solutions alone, but through a
newly thought series of interventions, both modern and traditional. It is
only through a concerted, collective and fundamental review of the nature of
our threat that we will help refine the focus of our challenge and thereby
bring us closer to achieving our shared goal. We can then strategically use
our combined resources to hold accountable these criminal ideologues who
place themselves above other ordinary human beings and claim divine
authority for misrule.

While in all probability we will sadly be fighting them for a long time to
come, barbaric and primitive though they are, it is naming and understanding
of the ideology itself that should next be our target. These individuals and
groups will of course ebb and flow, but it is the ideology that must be
combated and defeated. In the process, we can replace the term “war on
terror” and focus on the real threat, which is the rise of these evil
fascist theocracies.

HRH Prince Salman bin Hamad Al-Khalifa is Crown Prince of the Kingdom of
Bahrain.