By Raymond Ibrahim ——Bio and Archives--December 12, 2015
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Let's not forget that some of our own foreign policy as Americans, as the West, have fueled that extremism. When we support cruel leaders in Egypt, or other places. When we support dictatorships, repressive regimes around the world that push people over to the edge. Then they become extremists; then they become terrorists. We are partly responsible. Terrorism is a global problem, not a Muslim problem.It's a testimony to CAIR's intellectually barren and morally bankrupt--or, in a word, Islamist--nature that it must fall back on one of the most manifestly false of all apologias: the claim that Islamic violence is a product of Islamic grievance--in this case U.S. foreign policy. The fundamental problem with the "grievance" claim is that it contradicts what the terrorist themselves repeatedly say is their motivation--killing non-Muslims ("infidels") according to the Islamic doctrine of jihad. Although jihadis do enjoy taking advantage of Western softness/naivety by claiming their murderous bloodlust is "our fault"--thereby killing two birds with one stone: 1) getting unwanted attention away from Islam/Muslims and 2) gaining concessions for the same--they also make it clear that hating, subjugating, and terrorizing the non-Muslim is required by Islamic law, or Sharia. This was well summed up by the late Osama bin Laden. Although he had issued any number of communiques that were eagerly published by BBC and CNN saying that 9/11 was "payback" for supposed anti-Muslim U.S. foreign policies, he wrote the following words in a private letter to fellow Saudis:
Our talks with the infidel West and our conflict with them ultimately revolve around one issue ... and it is: Does Islam, or does it not, force people by the power of the sword to submit to its authority corporeally if not spiritually?... The matter is summed up for every person alive: Either submit, or live under the suzerainty of Islam, or die. (The Al Qaeda Reader, p. 42)
So long as Islam endures, the reconciliation of its adherents, even with Jews and Christians, and still more with the rest of mankind, must continue to be an insoluble problem. ... For an indefinite future, however reluctantly, we must confine our political recognition to the professors of those religions which ... preach the doctrine of "live and let live."Of course, today we do "not confine our political recognition to the professors of those religions which ... preach the doctrine of ‘live and let live'"--and so we die for it in the name of "diversity" and "multiculturalism." To the credit of CAIR's Hussam Ayloush, he is partially correct when he says that "Let's not forget that some of our own foreign policy as Americans, as the West, have fueled that [Islamic] extremism." It's not, however, because "we support cruel leaders in Egypt"--a reference to President Sisi, who overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood, CAIR's mother-organization, which the Obama administration supported. Rather it's because "we support cruel leaders" in nations like Saudi Arabia, which engages in the same sorts of atrocities that ISIS does--not to mention is the chief exporter of jihadi ideology around the world. Yet the human rights abusing Islamic kingdom is called a "U.S. friend and ally" (while secular, religiously tolerant Bashar of Assad is portrayed as Satan incarnate). The policies of the Obama administration have, in CAIR's words, most certainly "fueled [Islamic] extremism" in countless ways--most notably by creating vacuums in Iraq, Libya, and Syria that have been filled by ISIS. Speaking of Obama, the reason organizations like CAIR can continue disseminating the "grievance" myth is because the U.S. president and his administration also rely on it to distance Islamic terror from Islamic teaching. Obama himself said ISIS "exploit grievances for their own gain," the State Department claimed that "a lack of opportunities for jobs" was the appeal of ISIS, and the head of the CIA said that jihad was "fed a lot of times by, you know, political repression, by economic, you know, disenfranchisement." Meanwhile, back in the real world, studies and statistics make unequivocally clear that "devotion" to Islam is what precedes terror attacks of the sort that occurred in San Bernardino. For further reading that nails the coffin of the "Muslim-violence-is-a-product-of American-foreign-policies" claim, see the following articles:
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RAYMOND IBRAHIM (RaymondIbrahim.com) is a widely published author, public speaker, and Middle East and Islam expert. His books include Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians (2013) and The Al Qaeda Reader (2007). His writings, translations, and observations have appeared in a variety of publications, including Fox News, Financial Times, Jerusalem Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Times Syndicate, United Press International, USA Today, Washington Post, Washington Times, and Weekly Standard; scholarly journals, including the Almanac of Islamism, Chronicle of Higher Education, Jane’s Islamic Affairs Analyst, Middle East Quarterly, and Middle East Review of International Affairs; and popular websites, such as American Thinker, the Blaze, Bloomberg, Christian Post, FrontPage Magazine, Gatestone Institute, the Inquisitr, Jihad Watch, NewsMax, National Review Online, PJ Media, VDH’s Private Papers, and World Magazine. He has contributed chapters to several anthologies and been translated into various languages.