UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres thinks he’s got terror figured out: apparently, any rule that can be perceived as taking issue with Islam will “fuel terrorism.” While not a direct quote, Guterres does say regulations like President Trump’s travel ban will create more terrorists:
“One of the things that fuel terrorism is the expression in some parts of the world of Islamophobic feelings and Islamophobic policies and Islamophobic hate speeches,” Guterres said at a joint news conference with Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir.
“This is sometimes the best support that Daesh can have to make its own propaganda,” Guterres said, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS. “So, we need to have a comprehensive approach to fight terrorism, including creating the conditions for societies that are multiethnic, multi-religious, multicultural, to be inclusive, to be cohesive, investing in the conditions to make diversity a richness, not a threat,” he concluded.
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Guterres’ comments regarding Islamophobia follow his criticism of the U.S. President Donald Trump’s controversial immigration restrictions that many political observers characterized as Trump’s gift to ISIS and other terrorist outfits.
First, Guterres needs to understand that most Americans who aren’t raging progressives don’t really care what he thinks of most things. In particular, the idea of a ban against certain people is hardly new, as many of his member states do just that to Jews. Further, Trump issued a moratorium rather than a ban, since it was only for 90 days, and the moratorium only covered seven countries, but whatever.
The thing Guterres needs to understand more than anything, however, is how backwards he has this.
“Islamophobia” would be defined as irrational distrust and fear of Muslims, when what we are seeing is a common-sense response to terror committed by Muslims and praised by Muslims. Very, very few people are responding in a bigoted manner.
Discussions about Islam simply weren’t a thing pre-9/11 as a general rule, despite terrorism’s long assault on the West. Not in the United States, at least. Sure, there are exceptions to that, but as a rule, none of us really cared one way or another. Today, many people feel differently.
However, remarkably few of those people who feel differently did so as anything other than a reaction to watching thousands of people die live on their televisions back in 2001, or during any number of other attacks since then. We’ve been targeted, so we need to respond.
Whether “Islamophobia” creates terrorists or not, it’s perfectly clear that Islamic terror forced people to discuss how to stop, you know, Islamic terror.
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