MUSLIMS THAT ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR TODAY’S VIOLENCE

…The aftermath of the Muslim extremists attacks on Paris

 

Some Mid-East journalists are putting the responsibility where it may belong.

 

We continually hear from so many people that American Christians are not at war against the religion of Islam.  We are instead only at war against the Muslin extremists.  But most Americans are still in a state of confusion and desperately want to really understand the root cause of all this violence.

 

The reality is that even in many Muslim countries, the majority of Muslims are struggling to come to grips with all the carnage and what their region’s Muslim role may have contributed to it.

 

There are those, including some Muslim and Arab writers, that blame Iran and Israel, while others point to the West’s policies and attitudes toward the Middle East and with the Muslim world in general. Of course, other media voices just repeat the view that all Arabs are part of a hidden conspiracy. 

 

However, today, some self-critical Muslim voices have arisen and they may have some of the real answers.

 

One Muslim writer, Yasmine Bahrani, a professor of journalism at American University in Dubai has discovered some individuals with different explanations as to what is going on regarding today’s violence from the world of extremist Muslims.

 

The story actually starts with Bahrani’s find of another writer and editor of the Arabic newspaper, Al-Mada, Mr. Adnan Hussein.  Mr. Bahrani writes that Mr. Hussein has suggested that much of the violence such as the attack in Paris were inspired by the way Muslim are taught about their history and their religion from very early on.

 

Mr. Hussein has written that “From elementary school through university, our young people are taught, sometimes with a stick, that Islam is not only great, but also better than other religions, and that those who are not like us belong in hell. What has emerged, is a “savage faith that stirs up decapitation, spills blood, instigates plunder and rape.  As for the real Islam, it has no place in our lives, or in the best of cases, it has a barely audible voice that almost nobody hears.”

 

And Mr. Bahrani states that Mr. Hussein is not alone with this observation.

 

Another Muslim editor of the Lebanese newspaper, Al-Hayat, Mr. Ghassan Charbel, has written that, “To rescue itself, the Arab and Muslim world must participate in the struggle against extreme Islamism.” Charbel called for shutting down platforms of hate and said the Middle East needs to undertake “a deep re-examination of its society”. He called for “universities, schools, mosques, TV and electronic sites to reclaim their platforms from that handful of destructive ideologues who control them”. He stated, “What threatens the Arab and Islamic world today is no less dangerous than the threat that Nazism posed to Europe.”

 

These writers are requesting that Middle Easterners examine their institutions and their societies more broadly for their responsibility for the extreme violence.

 

However, this view was not limited just to journalists; it is one that many of Professor Bahrani’s own students embrace at the American University in Dubai.

 

Virtually all of the professor’s students have rejected the sometimes presented premise that the French and British immigration policies gave extreme Islamism an entrée into their isolated Muslim communities.  The Dubai students argue that the Muslim immigrants in Britain and France are responsible for their own actions, whether they were isolated or not.  In addition, they don’t blame Western multiculturalism for the rise of this home-grown extreme Islamism. “That’s just silly,” stated one of the Dubai Muslim students.

 

When another Dubai class was asked “What responsibility do we have to explain to others that terrorists don’t represent all Muslims?”, the response was totally mixed. One Saudi student said, “It is not our responsibility if a (Western) person wants to learn about Islam, he should just Google it.”  But another Egyptian student was angered by the question: “If I hear one more time that peaceful Muslims have not done enough to condemn terrorists. . . . many peaceful Muslims are very weary of such criticism.”

 

But for the most part, they all emphasized that much work still needs to be done.  That is, whether it is in coming to terms with their own cultures’ problems, as Hussein and Charbel urge, or through advancing the acceptance of Muslim communities into Western societies.

 

The Jordanian journalist Mousa Barhouma has written about such Western and Muslim cultural challenges for years.  He has been advising Muslims living in the West that they must “integrate”.  If you are a Muslim who has moved to Holland, he  stated, “A newly arrived Muslim would need to accept and get used to that idea that they will be serving beer at the local Holland restaurants.”

 

Writers such as Bahrani, Hussein, Charbel and Barhourna agree that the attacks in Paris were not just against the true meaning of Islam, they were also against basic reasoning itself. 

 

 

But one positive result of both the Paris and San Bernardino attacks is that more voices demanding to understand the foundational responsibility for the heinous acts are beginning to be heard.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016