Leftist Mental Mush vs Islamic Jihad
Hugh Fitzgerald
“So many times I passed by these locations. Why do they hate us so much?” asked Franziska Brantner, a German Green MP and former member of the European Parliament, on Twitter (about the attacks in Brussels).
Do you remember Michael Scheuer, that obsessively anti-Israel former “bin Laden desk” expert at the C.I.A., who used to declare that “they hate us [America] because of our policies in supporting Israel and propping up the Al-Saud and invading Iraq”? Or others who said that “they hate us because of our intervention in Libya”? Or still others who said “they hate us because we supported (!) Assad” or “we supported the Houthis in Yemen” or “we supported Mubarak” or “we abandoned Mubarak”? Or those who said “they hate us because ….(fill in your favorite reason here – anything at all will do, as long as you don’t mention Islam).
In a longer list of answers to “why they hate us,” Scheuer provided a half-dozen reasons:
- U.S. support for apostate, corrupt, and tyrannical Muslim governments.
- U.S. and other Western troops on the Arabian Peninsula.
- U.S. support for Israel that keeps Palestinians in the Israelis’ thrall.
- U.S. pressure on Arab energy producers to keep oil prices low.
- U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.
- U.S. support for Russia, India, and China against their Muslim militants.
This implausible laundry list becomes even more comical if the “U.S.” is replaced by “Belgium,” for any of Scheuer’s reasons – i.e., there never was a Belgian “occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan,” nor Belgian “troops on the Arabian peninsula,” nor any Belgian “pressure on Arab energy producers,” and so on. And if one were to try to explain Muslim terrorist attacks outside the West, say in India or the Philippines, the inadequacy of his “reasons” becomes still more apparent — try substituting the “Philippines” or “Nigeria” for the “U.S.” and then read that list out loud.
Here’s a hint:
And of course Scheuer has a lot of company. Those who still ask that “why do they hate us so much?” question have one thing in common: they will never accept the perfectly obvious answer – “they hate us because we are not Muslims, and will not submit to Islam” – the answer that has been true for some 1350 years. This is the hate that we find throughout the Qur’an and Sunnah, a hate that does not need any particular prompting to exist, and that is just as adamantly directed against the most sober Amish horse-and-buggy farmer or Orthodox Jew walking to shul as it is against the most debauched admirer of Miley Cyrus or the Kardashian crew. “They hate us so much” because we are Infidels who have not yet succumbed, either by “reverting” to Islam, or by agreeing to be treated as dhimmis, paying Muslims for the privilege of staying alive while being allowed to observe our own faith, if we qualify as “People of the Book” (Christians and Jews).
“Why do they hate us so much?”
The bombs went off in Brussels as they had previously in Paris and Madrid and Moscow and London, and dozens of other cities around the world, many of them outside the West (in India, the Philippines, Thailand, Burma, Mali, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Sudan). That omnidirectional hatred that prompted all those bombs and guns is drummed into Muslims from an early age, in the canonical texts that matter. Not every last Muslim may end up subscribing to that hate, but enough of them do so that it is not unreasonable to conclude that “they hate us” because that’s what they are taught to do.
Islam is on the march in Europe. The political and media elites whose duty it is to protect and instruct the peoples of Europe have failed those to whom they owed that responsibility. Instead, they have allowed what by now must surely be many millions of Muslims to settle deep within Europe, behind what Muslims themselves are taught to regard as enemy lines, the lines of Dar al-Harb, and the European elites just don’t know how to talk about the problem, where to begin. Can someone who has been part of the political class, in and out of power during the last few dismal decades, in any European country, dare now to admit that “they hate us, I finally realize, because we are Infidels — and I helped let them in”? Don’t be silly.
