God Willing
"These acts of violence against innocents violate the fundamental tenets of the Islamic faith. The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace."
George W. Bush, post 9/11
It simply goes against the Western social-cultural grain to charge another culture, another heritage, another faith system with ascribing to hate, to terror, to violence against others. It is not a tolerable image, since after all, civilized societies do not react in this manner. They are at great pains to stress how non-judgemental they are about others whose culture and heritage is different than their own. As far as a different religion goes, it is civilly untoward to suggest its inferiority in any manner.
For no religion should incite to hatred against others', much less to launch terrorist attacks as a prelude to an all-out war. And so, platitudes smooth over the rough surfaces of suspicion and harmony prevails for a while. It doesn't prevent a backlash, but officially there is no reason to suspect Islam as representing a harm and a challenge to peace. Psychopaths who just happen to be Muslims do not represent the Muslim faith.
The conscience of the West brings the shame of racist ideals too close to home, if one can be charged with inequality, with suspecting on fairly obvious grounds, the hostile and malevolent intentions of others, and bring their religion into the general atmosphere of condemnation. It simply isn't done. Not without the consequences of blame and shame and counter-denials by those in society who will not have it done, in the name of civil rights and human relations.
Islam is now a major problem for the West. On so many counts. For the undeniable fact that its adherents harbour within the larger ummah a sizeable enough proportion of faithful who have surrendered their humanity completely to the larger issue and impressive calling of responding to the call to jihad, to sacrifice, to martyrdom and to glory in Paradise because they have answered that call. The greater the atrocity the greater the success and the more assured of a place in the posterity of Islam's historical memory.
The visceral suspicion by people of the East toward people of the West, their conspicuous successes denied the East, in the advances achieved in their finances, their industry, their trade and sciences, all enhanced by the ideas promulgated of its unfairness. The financial and business acumen of Jews is held to be largely responsible, along with their hold on the news media and the international banking system, resolutely anti-Muslim, owning influence and wealth denied Islam.
Leftist academics throughout the Western world, however, engage in mental and physical acrobatics bending themselves crisply into pretzel forms to prove how liberal and engagingly cooperative they are to the protests of Islamophobia should anyone be infelicitous enough to want to engage in a conversation about why and how it is that Muslims seem so engaged with explosive violence, so volatile in their reactions at any hint of 'racial profiling', when their engagement in violence is so prevalent, arousing actions meant to prevent them from inflicting further damage on all they view as enemies.
And that's a wide net, their enemies, since not only does that include all those Western countries and governments which emigration from the Middle and Near East and North Africa have settled within, but also where Muslims have always lived and where the denial of equality of other religions whose members they oppress and contemptuously target for violence, but in a spirit of generous inclusiveness the net is opened wide enough to include fellow Muslims.
Typically if conversations do take place within academia they would be like the recent Oxford Union debate where the resolution "This House Believes Islam is a Religion of Peace", won the proceedings by 286 to 168 votes. The Oxford peace resolution being supported by a British journalist, Mehdi Hasan who is also the political editor of Huffington Post's U.K. edition. Who debated Anne-Marie Waters, of the National Secular Society.
She predictably enough stated the obvious, citing the reality of the New York/Washington/Pennsylvania 9/11 jihad attacks, the British 7/7 terrorist attacks, the Mali attacks, the Spain attacks leading that country to back out of its Afghanistan alliance against the Taliban, and others. Violence, argued Mr. Hasan, was conducted by a minuscule percentage of the faithful; the remainder should not be inducted into slanderous attacks to "fuel the arguments of bigots".
Call an honest Westerner a bigot and you have destroyed their self-regard. But who is it who has slaughtered a hundred-thousand Syrians if not their Muslim tyrant? And why would two Muslim countries like Iran and Iraq conduct a multi-years conflict that destroyed the youth of their generation, used as fodder for revenge on the battlefield of sectarian hatred? From Somalia to Nigeria, Libya to Tunisia, Egypt to Iraq, vengeful Islamist Sunnis wreak atrocities on Islamist and modestly moderate Shias alike. With ample reciprocation.
Peaceful Islam is hard to detect in today's world. Although most Muslims bemoan the racism they claim has made their lives a misery, when polls are taken a surprising number of moderate-or-otherwise Muslims support the need for violence when Islam is perceived as being mocked by non-believers. A goodly percentage of Muslims living comfortably in the West far removed from the inequality and oppression of their homelands support the need for jihad, violent if necessary and it is sometimes necessary.
From Afghanistan to Pakistan, while reviling the West, Muslims prey on one another. Madrassas funded by Saudi Arabia teach Wahhabi-style Islamism in Nigeria and Mali, and clerics recruit jihadists in mosques located in Paris, London, Toronto, New York, Malmo, Bremen, and all points of the geographic compass.
Labels: Conflict, Islam, Islamism, Peace Human Relations, Terrorism
posted by Pieface @ Monday, July 15, 2013
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