it's the american way it's the american me it's the american you
Behrooz Ghamari on Thomas Friedman, the Brand You Can Trust When Your Family Needs Smug Condescension:
[Another] false presupposition Mr. Friedman puts forward is that bin Ladenite jihadism is a Muslim problem that begs Muslim solutions. I wonder whether throughout the years that the IRA terrorized Britons in London any pundit ever called the predicament of the Irish a "Catholic problem with Catholic solutions." It is so convenient for Mr. Friedman to bury the historical facts of the emergence of al Qaeda with the aid and assistance of the Reagan administration and Pakistani intelligence services. The problem of violence wrapped in an Islamic cloak does not make it Muslims' problem. It is true that Islam, like any other religion, is understood in competing and at times contradictory ways. But each of these competing interpretations of Islam corresponds and reacts to particular situations in which Muslims find themselves. One cannot understand violent interpretations of jihad outside the violence to which Muslim majority nations have been subjected. In other words, Islam is not innately predisposed to violence; it does not breed savagery ex nihilo, thus the fallacy of terrorism as a "Muslim problem." Somehow it is easier for many western pundits to understand that rather than a "Catholic problem," violence in Northern Ireland had much to do with British Empire.
Mr. Friedman declares that "When jihadist-style bombings happen in Riyadh, that is a Muslim-Muslim problem. That is a police problem for Saudi Arabia. But when Al-Qaeda-like bombings come to the London Underground, that becomes a civilizational problem." Then he rushes to position himself as a defender of Muslims' rights in the West by observing that these attacks would harm their civil liberties and will turn each Muslim into a suspect. With friends like Tom, who needs enemies! As a zealous advocate of unregulated globalization, Mr. Friedman ought to know that jihadists fighting the Saudi police on the streets of Riyadh is hardly an internal matter of Saudi Arabia. Fighting a police force that is trained by American advisors, armed by American-made weapons to protect the interests of an oppressive Royal Family supported by the United States is far from a mere domestic dispute. What Mr. Friedman wants is a war away from home, where the casualties are unknown and the costs hidden.
"Jihadist-style bombings," in London, Madrid, and any other European or American cities are not inherently different from the same kinds of attacks on civilians in Baghdad, Tehran, Bali, Riyadh, or anywhere else in the Muslim world. They are neither civilizational nor do they have anything to do with Islam. An al-Qaeda attack on innocent civilians is as much part of Islam as Timothy McVeigh was a descendant of Thomas Jefferson.
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