By Selwyn Duke
“Islam is not the problem,” proclaims the Left. And if you say otherwise, you’re a “racist,” even though “Muslim” is not a race. Yet a fact remains: virtually all the world’s terrorists today claim Islamic motivations. So if Islam (belief) is not the problem, are we then left with a genetic explanation for this violence? Is there something inherent in the groups generally embracing Islam — Arabs, Persians, Indonesians, Punjabis, etc. — that would account for it? And, hey, I’m just asking; it’s the liberals who profess ideas suggesting this possibility.
Consider: When analyzing WWII and Germany, few claim the problem was Germans, but Nazism. When looking at 1917 Russia, we don’t say the problem was Russians, but Marxism. So fill in the blank: when evaluating the Muslim world and its violence, do we assume the problem is the people or _____?
Then there are other explanations for Muslim violence, all of which amount to Islamsplainin’. Poverty is one, but the Muslim world is not uniquely poor. There are many millions of poor Catholics in South America, Africa and elsewhere; and hundreds of millions of poor Hindus in India. Yet they aren’t committing terrorist acts. And Osama bin Laden was worth $125 million.
Another excuse is U.S. “meddling” in Muslim nations’ affairs; our taking Israel’s side in the Mideast is always Exhibit A. But there’s simply no good correlation between American interventionism and Muslim violence. Many nations and regions, such as Nigeria, Kashmir, Sudan, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso and Mali, have problems with Islamic terrorism in the absence of a Yankee hand.
In fact, it isn’t unusual for Muslim nations to occupy 8 spots on a list of the world’s 10 most dangerous countries (examples found here and here). It also isn’t unusual for a non-Muslim nation in the top 10 to be a country such as North Korea or Central African Republic, the latter of which is 15 percent Muslim. This is no surprise, mind you, if we’re to believe a comprehensive German study of 45,000 youths that was reported in 2010. It found that while increasing religiosity among the Christian youths made them less violent, increasing religiosity among the Muslim youths actually made them more violent.