Westerners, including Americans, tend to view each Islamic jihad group or government as a separate entity with a very specific political and geographical beginning, and thus the straightforward possibility of a quick end due to political, economic, or geographical shifts and deals. This is a mistake and helps explain why Western leaders so often fail to understand the Middle East and Muslim Africa.
When an American president or European prime minister looks at Hamas or Hezbollah or the Iranian regime or ISIS or Al-Qaeda or Boko Haram, they never start by asking, “Does this movement or regime come out of 1,400 years of Islam? Do ancient Islamic principles or even more ancient barbarian mindsets inform this group of killers?”
The reality is that Islamic sacred texts have been endorsing deceiving, raping, torturing, and killing non-Muslims for almost a millennium and a half. And when Mohammad or whoever actually invented Islam created it in the seventh century, he or they did so by designing it specifically for violent, misogynistic, tribal barbarians. It is a religion that sanctifies all the worst passions and sins of mankind, and it gives the divine seal of approval to the most base and evil impulses. Unsurprisingly, such a religion has been destructive from the moment of its inception and continues to be today.
I am not saying, of course, that politics and geography and economics have nothing whatsoever to do with the formation of certain Islamic groups; I am simply saying that to try and isolate them from a global and historical continuum is dangerous and inaccurate. Yes, certain political situations might give rise to Islamic terrorist groups and regimes, but there is a reason that similar circumstances do not create mass terrorist movements in Christian and Jewish nations. There is a reason that the overwhelming majority of mass terrorist attacks in the world are due to Islam. The reason that making certain lucrative economic deals or trying to negotiate with a regime that sponsors a dozen or more terrorist groups doesn’t succeed in ending wars is that each of these groups and regimes is one of many Islamic tyrannies. You cannot put out a forest fire by hosing down one tree. Nor can you bribe cultish ideologues into rejecting violence.
Related: Egyptian Muslims Attacked Coptic Christians. Authorities Arrested the Christians.
Indeed, for Islamic rulers, there is no separation between religion and politics, which is another mistake Americans and other Westerners make. We keep making economic deals or military alliances with governments that sponsor Jihad (Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, etc.) and thinking it will be all right because we will only have to deal with them for financial, technological, and defense reasons. But as Hamas cofounder’s son Mosab Hassan Yousef wrote, “There's no ‘political Islam.’ There's only Islam. The idea of a separate political version implies a non-political one exists, which is false. Islam does not separate mosque and state.” Again, this is another reason for not accepting university funding from, stationing our men in, and offering our technology to sharia dictatorships like those in Qatar, Lebanon, Gaza, and Saudi Arabia.
Cultural imperialism on the part of Western leaders has led “democratic” nations to fund and fuel terrorism for decades, as we wilfully refuse to acknowledge the reality of Islam. That needs to change now, and in a dramatic way.
