Blaming others for one’s own failings represents the lowest level of human consciousness manifested in a total inability to be emancipated from a purely materialistic mode of thinking.
Blaming the Jews as the ‘killers of Christ’ netted the so-called Christians ill-gotten material gains by confiscating Jewish properties. The new trend in Europe is ‘Muslim terrorism’ leading to Islamophobia or a fear of Islam, which is being marketed by Christian and Jewish extreme-right parties in the West and in Israel, a ‘well-thought’ campaign because what we fear, we naturally hate!
There can never be Islamic, Jewish or Christian fascism, but there are plenty of fascists who claim to be Muslims, Jews and Christians, as recently witnessed.
While the world was getting ready to commemorate the victims of the World Trade Centre attacks in New York, another campaign was being prepared against Islam with ‘Muslim terrorism’ being the highlight.
Suddenly a Norwegian claiming to be a member of a Christian rightist party spoiled ‘the Islamophobia party’ by committing an atrocity that killed nearly 100 innocent people, mostly youngsters enjoying a summer camp in Norway.
The killer justified his heinous crime as “a necessary action in the fight against Islam and Muslims in Europe”. This absolutely sick degenerate person killed Christian children in his fight against ‘Muslim terrorism’!
It reminds us of the Christian crusades against ‘the Muslim infidels’, but the first victim of the war was Constantinople, the Jewel of Christendom, which was stripped off its treasures that were transferred to European capitals!
Knee-jerk reactions
The very same insanity is taking place in Palestine where ‘Israelis are confiscating Palestinian homes and farms as a divine entitlement’.
The West’s first reaction to the massacre in Norway was to blame it on ‘Muslim terrorism’. When the Nordic blonde Christian who happened to be an ardent supporter of Israel proudly confessed to the crime in his fight against Muslims “who should be driven out of Europe”, the western world stood still in shame.
This evil and inhumane mentality seeking to drive out Muslims from Europe is similar to that of the Nazis that sought to purify Europe of Jewish presence and the colonial Zionists who continuously work to drive Palestinians out of Palestine.
Yet, many western observers discreetly questioned the rush to blame Muslims for the massacre in Norway. German Felix Steiner wrote that “before knowing the perpetrator was a Norwegian, many in Germany assumed that ‘Muslim terrorists’ were behind the massacre in Norway”. He asked: “Why did they hold such a belief which made them commit an extreme misjudgment?”
Shaikh Hassan Mousa, a Muslim thinker, responded to Steiner’s query by stating that “the culture of blind hatred that generates terrorism does not belong exclusively to one religion or country as events showed in Norway”. He said “the extreme-right in Europe is much more dangerous than Al Qaida”.
The extreme-right parties in Europe have grown in recent years enabling them to stoke the fires of hatred against Islam and Muslims and preparing the ground to transfer them to their original countries. In 2008, a meeting in Belgium arranged by Europe’s extreme-right political parties ended with the establishment of a united organisation dedicated “to eradicate the Islamisation of Europe”. The French far-right National Front party headed by Marine Le Pen has put “the de-islamisation of Europe” on the top of its agenda. Party members vandalised Muslim cemeteries in France in 2009-10.
Indeed, the western media can never claim innocence after establishing an alliance with the extreme-right current of thought — parties that have deep hatred for Islam and Muslims. An ‘ideal’ example of this unholy alliance is the Fox News Network that is championing the causes of the extreme ‘Christian right’ and the colonial Zionist Israeli occupation in Palestine.
It is the same Christian right which in the 1980s politicised Islam as a tool to fight communism and “the evil empire” in Afghanistan. It is the very same ‘Christian right’ that changed its name to ‘neo-conservatives’ allowing the ‘extreme Jewish right’ to grow into a powerful political base exclusive to the Republican party in the US.
It is worth remembering that ‘Al Qaida’ was the child of the neo-conservative trend in the western world. Neither Islam nor Muslims across the world had anything to do with it. Unless the world wakes up to the fact that the human perception of religion from a materialistic aspect serves man and not God, the whole world is going to suffer. Such religiosity is alien to the spiritual values of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Terrorism is a world phenomenon that is not limited to one state, country, culture or religion. Atrocities committed under such a phenomenon are the result of such man-serving religiosity, not God-sent religion.
Professor As'ad Abdul Rahman is the Chairman of the Palestinian Encyclopaedia.
