Why it’s wrong to blame western policies for the Paris attacks

Blasphemy and critical evaluation of Mohammed’s character have always been forbidden, and have been a highly sensitive issue throughout the history of Islam.

Blasphemy and critical evaluation of Mohammed’s character have always been forbidden, and have been a highly sensitive issue throughout the history of Islam

It is quite appalling to see how some western media figures have responded to the Paris attacks.

Some have blamed the cartoonists for provoking Muslims and inciting religious hatred, while others like Robert Fisk have blamed historic western policies for the murders.

Fisk claimed that the disenfranchisement of youth, economic deprivation, and past atrocities experienced by Algerians led to the Paris events.

Others on the far left like the inveterate anti-American journalist Glenn Greenwald started with Soviet style whataboutism and connected the Paris events with Israel, while the annoying Assange, still languishing in the Ecuador embassy, tweeted some five-year-old Telegraph report to obfuscate the Paris shooting issue.

It’s beyond absurd to blame French occupation of Algeria for the shootings. This is the kind of apologism that facilitates radical Islam. This strategy only results in appeasement of puritanical radical Islamic ideology and only offers one solution: ‘the West is evil’.

If past grievances and atrocities are considered to be the reasons behind these attacks then by this logic all Indians living in the UK would be retaliating to avenge the suffering their ancestors faced during British Colonialism. Bangladeshis would carry out attacks against Pakistan since they once ruthlessly persecuted Bengalis, killing more than a million of them and raping 200,000 of their women.

If Fisk were right, Vietnam and Japan would not be some of the most pro-American countries in the world today.

However the most pathetic and dismal response that came from the western press was from those who castigated Charlie Hebdo and blamed the cartoonists for provoking Muslims.

If one follows this flawed narrative then all liberal Muslims struggling against radical Islam on a daily basis in their own Muslim majority countries should only have themselves to blame whenever they are brutally attacked by extremist clerics and their zealot followers.

The Saudi writer and activist Raif Badawi who is currently being publicly flogged by repressive Saudia Arabia should be denounced for criticising the rabid misogynist clerics of the Wahabbi sect. All Pakistani liberals fighting against draconian blasphemy laws should also be condemned for inciting the wrath of terrorists.

Even a cursory examination of blasphemy killings in Pakistan can tell us that the real reasons why the cartoonists were attacked were not because of Western foreign policy, the Iraq War, or colonialism, but because of an ideology that has always been fanatical and dogmatic in nature and that is responsible for the misery of thousands of people, particularly in Pakistan.

This ideology has the power of igniting vigilante justice and provoking mobs into indulging in violence and vandalism. It’s the same ideology which sent Salman Rushdie into hiding for a decade, and that burnt 37 people to death after a mob set fire to a hotel building in Turkey.

It’s the same ideology that killed prominent Pakistani politician Salman Taseer after he questioned the concept of the country’s brutal blasphemy laws.

According to this ideology, any person who doubts the origins of Islam, draws caricatures of Prophet Mohammad or satirises revered Islamic figures is liable to be punished by death. The basis for this blasphemy belief is not the Quran but the Hadith, the second main source of Islam.

Many sects within Islam have varied views in relation to the blasphemy issue but almost all sects believe in the prohibition on images of Mohammed.

Apart from images, many sects of Islam also consider even questioning or doubting the origins of Mohammed as blasphemous. British Historian Tom Holland had his academic documentary on the origins of Islam cancelled by Channel 4 after he and his family received death threats and over 1200 complaints were received by Ofcom and Channel 4.

To blame this ideology on recent western policies is nothing short of the murder of history. Blasphemy and critical evaluation of Mohammed’s character has always been forbidden and a highly sensitive issue among Muslims in the history of Islam. It is not a new issue.

In 1929, Ilm-ud-din, a Muslim living in British India, took offence at a book published about Prophet Mohammed. He killed the publisher and was sentenced to death by the Indian Penal Code.

Consequently he was considered a martyr; 200,000 people attended his funeral and he was praised by the ideological founder of Pakistan Allama Iqbal. Even today in Pakistan, Ilm-ud-din is used as an inspiration for those who would kill in the name of Islam.

As Douglas Murray said on BBC Big Questions, the attack on 7 January was an attempt to introduce blasphemy laws in Paris.

In the aftermath of this attack, the western media has two options. The first is to reprint these cartoons and continue the unflinching quest of Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, as a way of paying tribute to their legacy. The second option is to take a step back and not criticise Islam or Mohammed, to accord Islam different treatment to other religions.

If the media follows the latter option, it will be a victory for the attackers and their ideology of blasphemy, and will set a dangerous precedent. I hope that the steps we take and our future course of action will not defer to this ideology. But as the responses so far have shown, not everyone is ready to stand up to it.

Anas Abbas is an accountant and investigative Counter Terrorism analyst. Follow him on Twitter or read his blog

145 Responses to “Why it’s wrong to blame western policies for the Paris attacks”

  1. Oliver

    Great stuff and good counter-Fisk. The only quibble is ‘their women’ in the Bangladesh par. Women are not property. Sorry to be right on, but is important.

  2. Tehmina Kazi

    A wonderful rebuttal to those who have taken the Fisk article (and others) as gospel. Thank you…

  3. omarali50

    Someone should undertake an examination of why these memes (“the West is responsible for these killings” or “the cartoonists were racist rightwing fascists who got
    what they deserved”) are so popular in a small but highly influential and vocal section of the Western elite? It cannot be that Fisk and Tariq Ali just come up with this sort of thing because they are ignorant fools. In terms of books read and world seen, they are clearly among the very thin sliver of highly informed and well-traveled people on this planet. One must then find some other explanation. I have some vague thought, but not enough
    time (or talent) to flesh them out right now (and hope someone else will…will
    either flesh them out or correct them):

    1. A small percentage of the “I am not Charlie Hebdo” crowd still believe they are part of some vanguard revolutionary army, fighting (mostly clandestinely, and shadowed therefore by the secret police of the empire) to overthrow the world capitalist system as part of a planet-wide resistance movement led by the Soviet Union and the comintern (or, even better, by the fourth international or the fifth or an even purer and cleaner sixth). I guess Tariq Ali would fall into this group. In his own mind he is like Victor Lazlo, slipping in and out of outposts of the empire with the Gestapo one step behind him. Therefore in his case (and that of others living out a similar movie-based fantasy) one does not have to posit ignorance. Calculation is more likely; the world revolution must use this event (and EVERY event) to further the revolutionary cause and if that requires making up stories and nasty insinuations about dead cartoonists (and linking them to the actually right-wing
    Jylland Posten and implying that they would insult Mohammed, but never Moses,
    as Tariq slimily did on “Democracy Now”) is par for the course.

    2. A much larger group (Fisk among them) is simply partaking in the ancient pleasure of feeling simultaneously superior and guilty. Superior by implying that “we” (the West) are the only people capable of DOING things, while childlike simple people (aka “the oppressed”, which list conveniently includes Hafez Assad and even Mao) react helplessly and chaotically to our schemes and conquests. Guilty at the crimes committed in “our
    name”. Then EVEN MORE SUPERIOR in the feeling that we few, we happy few, are
    able to see through this charade and pass our wisdom on to the toiling brain-damaged
    masses who look up to us as moral and intellectual giants.

    Something like that.

    Any takers who can fix these thoughts or flesh them out?

  4. Allen

    great piece Anas. thanks for writing this much needed article

  5. Jane Wade

    wow finally i am reading a piece that has taken on Greenwald. Fisk has gone bonkers!

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