Those who are genuinely interested in countering Islamist terrorism need to encourage dissenting voices in the Muslim world
As Friday night’s terror attacks in Paris were unfolding, the reactions of many individuals and groups often betrayed preconceived, nay rehearsed, reactions.
Different Quranic verses were cited by both overly defensive Muslims and anti-Muslim bigots to prove how Islam is the religion of peace, and violence – respectively.
While many Muslims condemned the attacks in numbers, many well-meaning westerners seemed guilt-ridden about the fact that we Muslims were ‘forced’ to issue these condemnations.
All this was on display before the final death toll was announced and before anyone had claimed responsibility for the attack.
Clearly apprehensions over – and loyalty towards – one’s favourite narrative superseded any interest in focusing on the victims of terror and engaging in discussions to forestall similar attacks in the future.
As the hours went on, French President François Hollande issued a strong statement against the culprits. The French border was sealed and a curfew implemented in Paris, before ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.
And then came the second wave of premeditated and repeated-to-death assertions.
They started off with ‘West is to blame’, discussed apprehensions about rise in ‘Islamophobia’, claimed that Islamist extremism isn’t a ‘Muslim problem’ and were exclamation-marked by the assertion that France was asking for it and should expect more of the same.
There was time for a reverse ‘all lives matter’ campaign as well, calling out ‘silence’ over recent blasts in Beirut in Baghdad, completely ignoring the role precedence plays in reactions and conveniently forgetting the global reaction to Peshawar attack and Boko Haram’s violence last year.
Evidently, those waiting for the overwhelming reaction to the Paris attack to generate noise for the Beirut or Baghdad bombings didn’t see the irony in their own delayed outrage.
This is not to suggest that amidst this tangential pool of self-serving narratives, no argument valid or relevant to the bigger picture was presented. Indeed, anti-Muslim bigotry is an ugly reality, as depicted by the Chapel Hill Shooting, PEGIDA, the anti-Islam rallies in Australia or by the many mosques becoming targets of hatred.
The same is true for Western states’ foreign policy blunders and the lack of Muslim/Arab communities’ integration.
But something somewhere is seriously wrong when prejudice against a community is one’s primary concern on the day a nation suffers the biggest acts of violence in decades. It’s almost as if racism is a bigger evil than terrorism, and that by correlation calling out anti-Muslim xenophobia a more pressing concern than Islamist violence.
The obsession some have with earmarking Western imperialism as the root of all global evil is paradoxically soft-racist. By putting the blame for the volatility of the Muslim world at large on the neocolonialist manoeuvres of the West, and not on the corrupt leaderships or religious fault-lines conspicuously manifested by the locals, these opinion-makers exhibit twenty-first century Orientalism, implicitly asserting that Muslims would readily act against their self-interest should a Western power sufficiently wish so.
This soft racism is also flagrantly displayed by anyone who claims Islamist terrorism is ‘not a Muslim issue’, which demonstrates complete denial of the simple reality that global imperialist jihadism (the kind of imperialism that isn’t quite factored by the self-pointing ‘critics’) is nourished in Muslim communities around the world, including the West. It also happens to affect the Muslims the most, both in terms of suffering from Islamist attacks, and the ensuing backlash.
But because the West trains, funds and arms jihadists for its self-interests, those militants that self-implode to kill Muslims and non-Muslims alike, and their domestic backers, get a pass as mere ‘tools’ or ‘creations’ of the West.
This is downright dehumanizing of Muslims, sold by sections of the left and bought by the right-wing resellers of the Muslim world to sketch the simplistic and convenient narrative that paints West as being historically responsible for the Muslim world’s predicaments.
ISIS’ statement claiming responsibility for the Paris attacks said they targeted “the capital of prostitution and obscenity, the carrier of the banner of the Cross in Europe”. There is no mention of ‘Western colonialism’, ‘economic disparity’ or ‘social alienation’, which some commentators keep asserting as the main motivation behind jihadists’ actions.
The statement is Exhibit A of jihadism, an expansionist terror drive carried forward by radical Islamists that seeks to destroy pluralism by holding a literal version of Islam as the sole rulebook for not just Muslims, but the entire world. Jihadism nourishes itself by painting Muslims as perpetual victims of the West’s actions – an idea perpetuated by regressive sections of the left and Islamists alike.
Those who are genuinely interested in countering Islamist terrorism need to encourage the dissenting voices in the Muslim world, the voices that critique the wrongs within their communities, leaderships and religio-political policymaking. If you keep vending the soft-bigoted idea that jihadism isn’t particularly a Muslim issue, Islamist extremism will continue to spread in the Muslim communities.
Why, after all, would we Muslims work on solving a problem that isn’t ours to being with?
As appreciable as the left’s self-critique regarding Western imperialism and anti-Muslim bigotry is, it shrouds the more pressing need for Muslim world’s self-reflection. Muslims taking ownership of jihadism won’t rid the West of its historic – and present – wrongs; but it would allow the Muslim world to finally catch up and reconcile with the modern ideals.
It’s a no-brainer that once Islamist extremism is curtailed, anti-Muslim bigotry will be gradually snuffed out in synchrony.
Kunwar Khuldune Shahid is a Friday Times journalist. Follow him on Twitter
74 Responses to “Paris attacks: Jihadism is an Islamic issue and twenty-first century Orientalists need to stop suggesting otherwise”
tamimisledus
Those with “dissenting voices” will turn against non-muslims, whenever they are in a position of power. They always have done, and they always will. They are no more interested in the continued existence of non-muslims and their beliefs than ISIS, Wahhabists, Muslim Brotherhood or any other such distraction.
And if all these groups were to disappear, those muslims remaining would still believe they have been given the right by *allah* to rule the world, for their own benefit.
All muslims have only one aim – to see the whole world subjugated to islam,
And that is not anti-muslim bigotry, that is the reality of islam.
tamimisledus
You don’t have to be mad to be a muslim, but ….. or no, sorry, you do.
If *allah*, the core of islam (who strangely enough never seems to be mentioned by muslims when talking to non-muslims about islam), were to present himself at a Western psychiatric hospital, he would be held under the mental health acts as a danger to himself and those around him.
Many anti-muslims think that mohammad needed help for his moral perversions and intellectual incapacity, but he only learned from the master, *allah*. the terrorist in chief, who far exceeded him.
And lest anyone forget, it is this very *allah* from whom ALL muslims get their (laughingly called) moral code.
tamimisledus
Those 70% of 2+million want to live in peace, with the non-muslims subject to their evil moral and legal codes. I don’t expect many of those non-muslims (certainly not me) would be at all happy living in peace on those terms. That would be a living hell.
tamimisledus
Those muslims hold all non-muslims in contempt and wish to see sharia reign.
Sounds suicidal for non-muslims to support them in introducing sharia.
But maybe you just have a subconscious death wish you want to sublimate.
tamimisledus
Exceedingly well put.
Did the poster “statchecker” stop to think that it might now even be much higher as muslims responded to the hyped anti-muslim backlash?
It seems that “statchecker” would find a huge amount of sympathy with islam and its anti-rational stance. That is, let’s ignore the facts if they don’t suit, and/or make some up that do suit.