Rise of the non-Ostriches

Many ask if it is fair to ask Muslims to condemn the terrorist acts of ISIS. No, says Dalia Mogahed:

“Condoning the killing of civilians is, to me, about the most monstrous thing you can to do. And to be suspected of doing something so monstrous, simply because of your faith, seems very unfair....(But when white, male Christians carry out terrorist attacks in the US) we don't suspect other people who share their faith and ethnicity of condoning them. We assume that these things outrage them just as much as they do anyone else. And we have to afford this same assumption of innocence to Muslims.”

But every other terrorist doesn’t cite his religion as the reason for his act. Therein lies the difference. Do the likes of Mogahed really not get that?!

Now that New York, London, Barcelona and Paris have joined the list of India and Israel as victims of terrorism, it’s harder for most people to pretend not to see the common denominator everywhere. If the “non-terrorist majority” of Muslims don’t speak up, the rest of the world will consider them the “irrelevant majority”. Other examples of “irrelevant majority” in history include most Germans during the Nazi era and most Russians during the Stalin era.

Besides, as Vir Sanghvi said, in the aftermath of Paris, more and more people ask:

“What transforms Western-educated Europeans into suicide bombers? Why do they turn against the system in which they have been raised?”

The usual “they are so oppressed” answer doesn’t hold water for people growing up in Europe, says Sanghvi:

“Today’s terrorists are not necessarily oppressed people driven to violence out of desperation. Often they are young people with a mystifying attraction to violent Islamism and an abiding behalf in the medieval notion that if they die while killing other people, they will go to heaven.”

If nothing else, shouldn’t the “non-terrorist majority” of Muslims stand up to say that the likes of ISIS distort their religion; and refute their quotations from the Koran point by point? Why not present the alternative view loud and clear so that the next Western Muslim who thinks of joining ISIS gets to hear the other side of the interpretation too? Edmund Burke once said:

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

The world isn’t asking the “non-terrorist majority” of Muslims to act; we are expecting them to speak. How can that be so difficult?

Those who are in ostrich-like denial of these trends shouldn’t be all that surprised when others feel enough is enough and start acting out. Because everyone in the world isn’t an ostrich. Guess what? Tolerance doesn’t extend to everyone: not to the mafia, not to the Nazis and certainly not to Islamic terrorists.