Fareed Zakaria asks the great ISIS question: Why do they hate us? The answer is very simple. They don’t, at least not just us. Islamic terrorists have been killing people all over the world for the last two centuries. In fact, most of the people they have killed have been Muslims. So is it true that all Muslims hate all non-Muslims or is it just a small terrorist group? Obviously it’s the later; but interestingly enough, The Koran, the guide to death from which they quote, isn’t much different than our own Judaic and Christian Bibles. Almost every Koran quote referring to killing non-believers, apostates, gays, failed wives, etc., has its almost exact parallel in both the Christian and Jewish bibles.
So why aren’t Christians and Jews blowing up buildings in Mecca and looking to collect their 72 virgins? And don’t say because you can’t find 72 virgins in the Christian world anymore.
So why? Well a lot of it has to do with the fact that the Muslim world has fallen far behind the west in terms of economic, educational and social benefits. Huge segments of the Muslim population across the world see no future for themselves. In this they bear distinct similarities to the followers of Donald Trump or those Brits who voted for Brexit. The argument to this theory is that the leaders of the Jihadi movement have often been intelligent, well educated and from wealthy families. This may be true of the leaders but it is certainly not true of the followers who strap a bomb to their waists and blow themselves up.
Education in the Muslim world falls far behind that in other parts of the planet and where it does exist, it often comes from the madras where it is peppered with anti-Christian sentiments that infect the students. It is from the uneducated, disaffiliated masses pouring out of the madras’ that the Jihadist fanatics are drawn.
Rashad Kjaliidi, a professor of Modern Arab studies at Columbia University has spoken at length on this subject. He speaks to the fact that most of the jihadists have no religious background, have not studied the Koran; know nothing about the concept of the Caliphate or much of anything else. They are just bitter angry disaffiliated youth who see no future for themselves, and are looking to lash out at anything that they are told is standing between them and some kind of future. They are acting out at authority, without actually having a factual background on which to base their protests. They don’t hate just America. They hate everything including themselves.
Americans, because we are so all-encompasingly self- involved believe that it is just us that the jihadists hate; but it isn’t. Far more attacks have happened in other parts of the world. Far more Muslims have been the victims of those attacks. Maybe it’s because those perpetrating the attacks usually have little background in anything and don’t always realize whom they are attacking. A high percentage of them are dropouts, drug users and, petty criminals. Former radical Magid Nowah told intelligence officers that recruitment was much easier when the recruits had no background in religion.
So are these religious fanatics or just fanatics? Irshid Manji, a Muslim scholar who has done extensive research in the causes and results of jihadist terrorism believes the latter.
According to Fareed Zakaria the roots of modern Muslim terrorism were planted in Greeley, Colorado in 1949, when Sayyid Qutb an ultra religious Muslim student attended an American church dance where he was exposed to the mixing of the sexes, the American way. By current western standards it wasn’t much, but for a confused, repressed, religious fanatic, it was mind blowing. This shouldn’t be surprising to anyone familiar with religious repression in any sect. That starts with Judaism, runs through Catholicism and alongthe paths of almost every religious experience. There is no greater suppression of human instinct than in organized religion, in every form.
At this church dance, Sayyid Qutb was scandalized. He wrote of the animalistic mixing of the sexes. He wrote a book, The America I Have Seen, which was the sensation of that segment of the Arab world that could read. He wrote 24 books on the adapting of Sharia Law to modern governments. He was executed in 1966 in Egypt for trying to overthrow Nassar, but his books and theories were propagated in the jails of Muslim countries. In Iran in 1979 popular protests based on Qutb’s work ran the American backed Shah out of the country.
Also in 1979 popular protest in Mecca demanded the ousting of the American backed government in Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom, the family that ran Saudi Arabia caved to the Wahhabi sect, the most backward, religiously fanatic sect in Islam. So it was from the mosques of Saudi Arabia that the fanatic jihad of the Wahhabi sect has spread. Most of the 911 bombers were Saudis. It’s Saudi money that financed Osama bin Laden. Both Omar Mateen, the Orlando killer and Tashfeen Malik the wife of Syed Farook the San Bernardino killers visited Saudi Arabia just before they perpetrated their crimes. The cowardly surrender of Saudi Arabia, to the Wahhabi crazies is at the root of the war by Muslim fanatics against the rest of the world.
Why do we identify the Islamic jihadists as crazy and sub-human? Mainly because they have allowed religious principles, especially flawed ones, to overpower their ability to reason their way out of problems. Look at the animalistic over-reaction that Muslim terrorists had to the Charlie Hebdo cartoons in Paris last year. There is an example to be drawn between the Muslim reaction and a reaction by more civilized western religions to similar controversy.
A couple of years ago a musical opened on Broadway called Book of Mormon. The whole point of the show is to make fun of the Mormon religion and it does so hilariously and often pointedly. Did the Mormon leaders call for a fatwa against the writer, producers and actors of this show? No. Why? Because they were intelligent enough to understand it for what it was, a biting raking over the coals of some aspects of their religion by some who found it ludicrous. Have the writers or actors been attacked by crazed Mormons in the streets? Have their homes been bombed? Not likely. Did the show get a bad review in the Salt Lake City papers? Probably, but no one has, as yet, bombed the box office. That’s the difference between civilized people who are guided by their intelligence and experience and crazed fanatics who act on their undeveloped instincts and follow unquestioned orders from their fanatic leaders. It would not surprise this writer to find that a good percentage of the group that attacked Charlie Hebdo had never seen the offending cartoons but were just following the orders of their crazed leaders.
No, they don’t hate just us. Yes, they hate everybody, especially other Muslims who want to live in freedom. All religions at their core are the home of fanatics who want to restrict everyone but themselves. Islam is no different; it’s just that Christianity and Judaism have made strides through the centuries from places just like where Islam is now to some small step toward enlightenment. Up until a few short years ago, Islamic tribes were living in the in the 7th Century. Many of them, simply because of the discovery of oil, have made great economic strides but many of them haven’t, and even those that have, still lag far behind the west in social and intellectual progress. Even the so-called civilized, Middle Eastern states still stone people to death, cut off heads and circumcise women. It is not so surprising that many of them still cling to aspects of their religion that westerners, not that long ago, abandoned in theirs.
So even though they talk a good game against America, when they act out, it is against anyone and everyone that gets in their way. In many cases we have earned their hate, but in most, they are just not informed enough to attribute the proper sins to our side of the ledger. Rather they strike out blindly at anyone who is not them.