I was in Cairo on September 11, 2001. On September 12, I went to an internet café and spent hours reading English-language news reports. Every single Muslim organization I came across had, by that time, already denounced the violence in strong terms. The denunciations weren’t simply coming from mainstream Western-Muslim organizations like CAIR, ISNA, and the UKIM, but, importantly, orthodox Muslims like the Muslim Brotherhood, Al-Azhar University, Madinah University, numerous Islamic Scholarly Councils in Europe, the U.S. and the Muslim world, and pretty much any other organization anyone on my Facebook list can think of. Muslims have continued to denounce terror each time extremist Muslims have engaged in indiscriminate violence. Anyone who continues to say “Muslims don’t denounce the terror committed in their name” is either insincere or lazy, or both. The denunciations aren’t exactly highlighted in western reportage, but one can find them without much difficulty. Empirical data show that the overwhelming majority of Muslims, both in the West and the Muslim-majority world, are opposed to groups like Al-Qaeda and ISIS, who, incidentally, kill many more Muslims than they do non-Muslims. Western hypocrisy is stunning. The Muslim-majority world was decimated by hundreds of years of brutal colonization at the hands of Western powers, and the post-colonial era has witnessed Western countries (like the United States) consistently suppress democracy, orchestrate military coups, and prop up secular dictators who have repeatedly committed mass murder against their defenseless populations. As if those policies weren’t damaging enough, the U.S. has also pursued a program of endless war in Muslim-majority countries. At nearly every turn, the United States and key Western allies have supported dictatorship and violence, essentially guaranteeing the continual recreation of extremists. Al-Qaeda was born in the Egyptian torture and rape chambers, and ISIS was born out of the massacres committed in Iraq. Even now, as we watch the war on ISIS with bated breath, the United States is pursuing a policy in Egypt that is almost certain to lead to an increase, not a decrease, in extremism. How can anyone act surprised that extremists have emerged from the rubble in societies ravaged by harsh brands of authoritarianism, poverty, and prehistoric education systems? Simple minded people locate the problem in religion. Serious people understand that the problem is complex, and that austere interpretation of religion is but one of many variables. For the madness to stop, Muslims need to push back forcefully against the terrorist mindset wherever it might be, and Westerners need to take a break from their endless entertainment options and pay attention to what their governments are doing with their tax dollars.
Posted on: Sun, 12 Oct 2014 04:55:37 +0000