In the eyes of most Islamists -- whether or Sunni or Shia -- nothing is cheaper or more worthless than human life. It can be seen in the accelerating rate of executions in Iran since the "moderate" President Hassan Rouhani arrived on the scene, and in the ghoulish slaughters committed by ISIS.
As terrorists throughout the Muslim world lay down their own lives to bring death, the U.S. and Europe silently watch Islamic terrorism in Sudan, in Pakistan, in Iraq and Syria by ISIS, in Nigeria by Boko Haram and especially in Iran by the Mullahs' regime, which the P5+1 (the permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) deludedly still seem to think will turn nuclear warheads into plowshares.
 Iran's Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, proclaims "Death to America" on March 21, 2015. (Image source: MEMRI video screenshot) |
U.S. and Iranian foreign ministers continue talks past deadline after deadline to give Iran -- one of the most corrupt, repressive and genocidal countries on the planet – a nuclear weapons capability to threaten the rest of the Middle East, the U.S. and Europe. Granting nuclear capability is seen as a reward for lying, cheating and breaking treaty after treaty. What a brilliant precedent for everyone else.
The West seems to have lost the will to criticize political Islam. Not speaking out or taking action against Islamists is a sickness not only of the current U.S. government; many intellectuals also seem to suffer from it. In the West, there are goodhearted intellectuals who also apparently wish to deny what an all-enveloping role religion -- and particularly Islam -- plays in shaping and influencing how people think and act.
The Marxist view holds that religion is just a placebo in the face of economic oppression. So, the thinking goes, if there is a problem in a Muslim society, it must mainly stem from poverty, inequality and class conflicts, as well as "Western imperialism." Many people influenced by this view therefore tend to believe that after the overthrow of capitalism and imperialism, the "oppressed" will cast off religion, to which they cling merely for consolation and the hope of a better future in an afterlife. Those who maintain this view remain silent on viciously repressive governments such as Hamas, Iran and North Korea, even as they claim to fight "imperialism" alongside regimes that hate Jews, Christians and women, and, in their effort to expand, are often themselves "imperialist."
In the meantime, many of these intellectuals, who include government leaders, seem to fantasize about the future of the Western and Muslim worlds as if once "capitalism," "American imperialism" and "Zionist occupation" were abolished, these despots would suddenly discover they no longer need violence or Islamic radicalism, and that a sunny new era of peace would begin. So, their view seems to go, if you criticize Islamism, you are an intolerant, hard-hearted "racist" or "bigot," and your remarks are obviously "hate speech."
It seems painful for many intellectuals in the West to understand or accept that a religious ideology which permits enslaving girls, beating "disobedient" wives or chopping off the heads of infidels can exist. They come up with supposed explanations for these acts, including poverty, "American imperialism," or mental illness.
Poverty or imperialism, however, do not cause people to burn people alive, kidnap schoolgirls and sell them at a slave market, while saying that God commands the practice. Poverty, anger or alienation do not cause people to behead or crucify non-Muslims; cite relevant verses of their holy book as a justification, and brag about and film what they do.
These leaders and intellectuals seem wrongfully to associate political Islam with "being oppressed." Political Islam, however, is not the ideology of the oppressed. It is an ideology that oppresses. It brings about the very the sufferings to which these intellectuals object.
Even Egypt's Muslim President, Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, seems to have realized that a worldview which makes excuses based on Islamic theology for many of the crimes committed in the Muslim world, only enables even more kidnappings, beheadings and deaths.
While "peace-loving" liberals in the West show support and sympathy for Hamas, as well as removing it from Europe's terrorist list, Hamas leaders have been busy expressing their support and sympathy for Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban:
In 2005, Dr. Mahmoud Zahar, co-founder of Hamas and a member of the Hamas leadership, said, "The Taliban are 1,000 times more honorable than the American occupation and its collaborators... We are not a copy of the Taliban... Judge us according to what we are. Everyone must stop blaming the Taliban for things that in fact characterize the people of the West, who seek to turn the international community into a swamp of corruption and destruction, and to spread abomination and disease in the name of absolute freedom..."
In 2011, Ismail Haniyeh, head of the Hamas's administration in the Gaza Strip said: "We regard this (the killing of Osama Bin Laden) as a continuation of the American policy based on oppression and the shedding of Muslim and Arab blood... We condemn the assassination and the killing of an Arab holy warrior. We ask God to offer him mercy with the true believers and the martyrs."
Why then is Hamas a "more acceptable" terrorist group than ISIS? Because it targets Jews? How can Hamas' Western sympathizers be so sure that the same extreme Islamic jihadist groups will not target them, "the infidels," in the future, as they say they will?
If these Islamic jihadist groups cannot carry out their mission right way, it is not because they do not want to. It is because they just do not have enough power to -- at least for now.
Uzay Bulut, a journalist born and raised a Muslim, is based in Ankara, Turkey.
Dean