By Dear President Obama,
I listened to your remarks at the G20, and this portion stood out to me from the rest:
“To the degree that anyone would equate the terrible actions that took place in Paris with the views of Islam, those kinds of stereotypes are counterproductive. They’re wrong. They will lead, I think, to greater recruitment into terrorist organizations over time if this becomes somehow defined as a Muslim problem as opposed to a terrorist problem.”
I would like to take this opportunity to address the specific question you posed:
“To the degree that anyone would equate the terrible actions that took place in Paris with the views of Islam, those kinds of stereotypes are counterproductive. They’re wrong. They will lead, I think, to greater recruitment into terrorist organizations over time if this becomes somehow defined as a Muslim problem as opposed to a terrorist problem.”
Challenge accepted! I’ll be one of the “ordinary people.” How did these extremist ideologies take root? How does any extreme ideology take root? Well, based on what I remember from sociology, human beings tend to congregate. We are social beings, we seek comfort in one another based on our shared life experiences. We need each other to continue the human race and to continue to advance the evolution of humankind. We create communities with our shared likes and interests, values and virtues. That’s how ideologies are created and how religions are formed.
From there, then what?
Let’s put it this way; years ago I remember asking someone, “How come there’s so many AA meetings in one night in one town?” I remember the response vividly, “Because all you need is another person, a coffee pot and a resentment — and you’ve got yourself a meeting.”
I imagine that’s sort of how extreme factions begin: an ideological disagreement leads to a new sect or faction. So what makes one faction extreme?
Ironically, I think you and the rest of our world leaders, past and present, can answer that. For example: King Abdullah, President Vladimir Putin and even President François Hollande were ambivalent in their response toward the crisis in Syria. King Abdullah was swift in taking military action when a Muslim Jordanian pilot was burned alive. Putin is on a rampage because of the downing of the airliner to Egypt filled with Muslims on the plane. Of course, I need not remind you what caused Hollande’s aggressive action over Syria in the past few days. Anger. It’s a powerful emotion. So I think it’s safe to say that anger probably fuels these factions. So why are they so angry? Well, lets think about this…
In 2001, the United States invaded Iraq — though we were attacked by Al-Qaeda, which was based in Afghanistan. Even children know that makes no sense. Children who witnessed the destruction of their country, their towns and their families were left homeless and orphaned under this farce of diffusing weapons of mass destruction and the evil empire that was hiding them.
That tends to upset people, especially when you have no way of comprehending it at the tender age of 5 or 6 years old. All that those children knew was that these weapons proudly stamped “Made in the USA,” butchered the lives they knew and claimed their mission a success. That’s not something you forget.
Now these little children are grown men — and they are pissed. We destroyed their entire way of life in a matter of minutes and we wonder why they can’t stand us?
“It’s pretty clear to the worldly public and — maybe more notably in the Middle East — that the United States international policy had been flawed with hypocrisy.”
But, of course, this is not the first war, nor will it be the last — so what made that the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back?
Hypocrisy. The world is pretty clear on the notion that if there were no oil, there would not have been an Iraq War — not the first, nor the second.
It’s pretty clear to the worldly public and — maybe more notably in the Middle East — that the United States international policy had been flawed with hypocrisy long before either Iraq war, and it’s not just a hypocrisy that has plagued the Middle East. Why? Because we set the standard. That’s right, in 1948, Eleanor Roosevelt and the United Nations had the audacity to create a Universal Human Rights Law so that the Holocaust that stole the lives of six million Jews would never again be experienced by any people. Bold, brave and beautiful!
Ironically, it was the same time that the white government in South Africa began ratcheting up its systemic segregation and when the newly-formed Israeli-Zionist government began their systemic segregation against Palestine. It wasn’t until 1973 that the United Nations acknowledged the apartheid in South Africa and it took the United States and Europe an additional 12 years to agree to enact the sanctions and embargo that the United Nations called for in 1973.
As far as Palestine? That apartheid and subsequent genocide continues and we, the world, have yet to agree that that is what is occurring.
Of course, those are not the only human rights violations in the history of the Universal Human Rights Law. Let’s not forget the Bosnian Muslims who were systematically and ethnically cleansed from 1992-1995 without so much of an utterance in the United States about the massacres and mass graves being ordered by a Christian Bosnian leader.
How about the genocide of Muslim Kurds in 1988 by the Saddam Hussein regime? Apparently those lives were not as valuable as the oil that was threatened in 1991, which led to the Gulf War. That’s just the Middle East.
Let us not forget the 500,000 killed in Rwanda in 1994 within a four-month period, the Christian genocide in Burma by Buddhists, Darfur in 2003 and the Sudanese, the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the “Democratic” Republic of Congo, Sri Lanka, the Ivory Coast — or how about Somalia which comes in third — after Syria and Afghanistan — as the largest refugee population in the world.
When you have nothing left to live for and the only direction you have is your anger and your religious text, I’m doubtful it creates cautious optimism.
Eleanor Roosevelt must be turning in her grave. Although well-intentioned, I’m sure she never imagined humanity could be so cruel to itself and I’m sure she never imagined the United States that boldly set the stage for the Universal Human Rights Law would be a part of that cruelty. Well, if not doing anything isn’t a crime then the least we can do is take some accountability for our mess — the Middle East.
No, it is not only our mess, but the welcoming committee made up of these United States and their “allies” created the ongoing refugee crisis, and along with the refugees — that we are now attempting to reject — we’ve ticked off a lot of people. A lot of people who had nothing left, except what they perceive to be religion. When you have nothing left to live for and the only direction you have is your anger and a religious text, I’m doubtful it creates cautious optimism. As a matter of fact, it closely resembles desperation and criminal insanity. Put all that together and you have extremism.
So, you see, Mr. President, when those who have no hope and nothing left to live for are stripped of humanity and decency (we may have forgotten about Abu Ghraib but I’m quite certain the victims haven’t) and all that are left are humiliated souls, it’s a recipe for disaster. Those humiliated souls with no hope, only despair, religious texts and a resentment: “You’ve got yourself a meeting!”
Before you know it, you have individuals who are angry and powerless and alone — together. Strip them of Maslow’s most basic needs on the hierarchy and somehow they manage to survive and they are greeted with resistance, rather than praised for their resilience.
Mr. President, you asked, and I answered. Perhaps that might clarify how “these extremist ideologies take root.”
The actions of extremists — regardless of their religion — are barbaric and animalistic, though I’m not sure that any other animal is this cruel to their own species.
I leave you with this. Ayn Rand once said,
It then stands to reason that when the fountainhead is broken, there is no progression; and being that it’s impossible to stand still, there is only regression.
The extremists are attempting to do just that: cause our humanity to regress. And, if you think that the only people I am referring to when I say “extremists” are ISIS and its members, then I have grossly underrated your intelligence and your empathy.
Thank you for your time, Mr. President.
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Written by Shirin Zarqa-Lederman
Image: Screengrab/MSNBC
Obsession with religion often tends to make the obsessionist follower tread on the path of intolerance and becoming radical. Unfortunately, Muslims are in abundance who are greatly obsessed with their religion as far as its implementation is concerned regarding political, social spheres of life. Instead of keeping the religion just a faith based on personal choices, they resorting to a faith likely to be imposed on others as well in the form of Sharia laws, this is bringing all the conflicts.
Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama are obsessed with religion, and you don’t see them behaving this way. On the other hand, you have the Chinese Communists who are obsessed with anti-religion and they butcher the Falun-Gong till the cows come home. It sounds trite, but there’s something beyond religion with these ISIS creeps. Something they have in common with violent radicals of all stripes. That being said, I thoroughly resent the tone of this article that tries to make excuses for the terrorists, Oh, the poor dears are poor and without hope. Terrorism is the response to oil imperialism and abject poverty. Cut the crap, Osama bin Laden hailed from one of the richest families in the Middle East. All these ISIS hackers and tech specialists weren’t born in mud huts and raised in dung, and neither were the perps of the Paris attacks. They’re educated, privileged people. They’re radicals because they choose to be. I wish these Muslim talking heads would stop making excuses and trying blame circumstances and the dastardly West for their crappy coreligionists.
I don’t think that Pope Francis and Dalai Lama are obsessed with religion specifically as they have their own views on so many things. Having independent views is also a part of being sane and experienced enough. It’s just the craving that your religion should reign supreme no matter what the situation or society or things that maketh the obsessionist.
Don’t think that social status or economic status helps much in stopping the person from going gung-ho about religion. It’s just the heightened/uncontrolled desire to crave for religion, ideology that ascerbate the situation to an extent that’s much bad in every sense.
Shying away from reality is always the tactics of people, whether religionist or otherwise to stop or divert away from the stark truths against their ideals as people cling onto their favorite things like….obsessed.
Bertram, I’m sorry that what you received from this article was an “excuse” for terrorist activity rather than an understanding. Binladin was a product of the United States who went rogue as are ISIS.