Judging from the way his critics have been going on, I would say that Tunku Varadarajan was on to something in his Forbes column "
Going Muslim."The reaction to his important and well-reasoned article ironically confirms and further underlines his central point; namely, that out of political correctness we refuse to see and act on the obvious--the implication of Islamist ideology in violent acts such as the murders perpetrated by Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan.
Instead of addressing the substance of Mr. Varadarajan's arguments, the self-appointed spokespersons for Islam turn the whole discussion around and present Muslims as the victims of "hate-speech" or "Islamophobia." This now-familiar rhetorical tactic deflects public attention away from an entirely legitimate and necessary question: Would this crime make any sense apart from Islamist ideology?While posing as victims, some Muslims absolve themselves from considering Islam as in any way responsible for acts such as those of Maj. Hasan. Certain groups of Muslims are adept at nursing and flaunting their grievances, and, as Theodore Dalrymple once put it, there is nothing like grievance to prevent people from examining their own responsibility for their situation.
Mr. Varadarajan uses the phrase "Going Muslim" reluctantly since it is disconcerting, and he is careful to distinguish between those Muslims who are radicalized and the many more who are not. The problem, he reminds us, is the privileging of religion in general, not just Islam. Again, in his very sensible list of what practical steps we can take to prevent such acts as Maj. Hasan's from recurring, Mr. Varadarajan makes it clear that he is talking of "radical Islamism," and he recognizes that there may well be other problems such as "sympathy with white supremacism" or "simple mental unfitness." Such a nuanced analysis cannot be characterized as "crude hate-mongering."
Not all Muslims are terrorists. My family is Muslim, of Indian origin. My brother is a practicing Muslim, a gentle soul who is not capable of hurting anyone. But we have seen a great many terrorist acts committed by Muslims since 9/11. According to a poll conducted in 2006, a quarter of British Muslims believe that the terrorist bombs in the London subway in 2005--which killed 56 people--were a legitimate response to the "war on terror."
Even the politically correct F.B.I. estimates that of 2,000 mosques in the U.S., 10% preach jihad. There are said to have been at least 14,396 acts of Islamic terrorism (if we include the latest blast in Peshawar, Pakistan) since the World Trade Center atrocity; more people are killed by Islamists each year than were killed in all 350 years of the Spanish Inquisition; more civilians were killed by Muslim extremists on 9/11 than in the 36 years of sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland. Then let us not forget the recent acts in Bali, Madrid, London, Mumbai, Thailand, India, Somalia, Nigeria, the Philippines and almost on a daily basis in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. And yet, it is Muslims who are offended when we raise these facts.
Muslims have invented two new human rights: the right not to have Islam criticized, and the right not to be offended. Religions do not have rights, only individuals have rights; and second, there is no such right as "the right not to be offended." There are many passages in the Koran that offend me, but I do not advocate the banning of this book. We have now heard all manner of psychological explanations, attributing Maj. Hasan's acts to stress caused by racism, the fear of deployment in Afghanistan and harassment from other soldiers, maladjustment to his life and a sense of not belonging and, finally, pre-traumatic stress disorder.
Perhaps Maj. Hasan was truly mentally disturbed. I have no idea. Hitler and Stalin were probably mentally disturbed also, but it is their respective ideologies that explain their behavior. It was their ideologies that give the framework and direction to their acts, and that explain the targets of their hatred. We look to their belief systems, Fascism and Communism--and, in the case of Maj. Hasan, Islam--to help us predict acts and to be guides to future behavior. It is the respective ideologies that are used by their adherents to justify their acts. Maj. Hasan looked to various tenets of his faith and Quranic injunctions to justify his acts.
Sir Isaiah Berlin once described an ideologue as somebody who is prepared to suppress what he suspects to be true. Berlin then concluded that from that willingness to suppress the truth has flowed much of the evil of the 20th and other centuries. The first duty of the intellectual is to tell the truth. By suppressing the truth, however honorable the motive, we are only engendering an even greater evil. Mr. Varadarajan has surely fulfilled his duty.
Muslims who wallow in self-pity would instead do well to look at their faith, which pushes so many of their co-religionists to such barbarism. In the meantime, it is up to the authorities in the Armed Forces, the F.B.I., the C.I.A. and Homeland Security to protect our democracy and security by not suppressing the truth, and certainly not by obstinately sticking to political correctness when it clearly endangers us all. Ibn Warraq is a research fellow at the Center for Inquiry, Transnational in Amherst, N.Y., and the author of
Why I Am Not A Muslim.
Source:ForbesRelated Stories
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