On the Worm and Its Host

Well, it appears that my column yesterday generated a fair helping of controversy among the campus Muslim community. Good. I hate it when people nod and smile.

Upon attending the Arab Student Club's coffee-house last night (which I apparently shouldn't have done according to one commenter on the Collegian's website) a member of said Muslim community (not naming names, but a really cool guy) explained to me the error of my lack of clarity. Apparently quite a few people think that I've reinforced, or at least left open to reinforcement, the stereotype that all Muslims are terrorists.

So here's the corrections. I will explain my precise views upon the relationship between Muslims and terrorists. Also, I don't write those stupid headlines; my original headline was just "Oh Shit Mumbai", since when a terrorist attack actually happens there's really nothing more to say than "Oh shit". Also, "the Ramallah"? There's only one Ramallah; it's a city in the West Bank.

First, however, I'd like to ask a question: Does any person worth taking seriously really think all Muslims are terrorists?

Anyway... the precise relationship of Islamic terrorists to Muslims is that of a parasite to its host. The host (Muslims) exists independently of the parasite (Islamism, or Islamic Fascism), but the parasite cannot live without the host. Specifically, Islamist groups rely upon having a population of socially or economically oppressed, and preferably uneducated, Muslims from which to recruit.

A modern Islamist group tends to arise and maintain its existence for a mix of two reasons. Firstly, an established Islamist regime like the Shia government of Iran or the Wahhabists of Saudi Arabia may seek to exert influence over a population. Secondly, a population in a Muslim area perceives itself as having been invaded by a foreign power or occupier, as in Iraq (which really has been invaded and occupied by a foreign power), "Palestine" (which has been counter-invaded by its natives, who then proceeded to construct an idiotic military occupation...), or Lebanon (where there was an invasion and occupation, but it ended). Thus, Islamist groups are characterized by religious-fascist ideology based on the imperialism of the earliest Muslims and by recruitment/self-justification using the "resistance" and "revolution" rhetoric of 20th-century Communism (which actually fools many Western leftists into siding with Islamists on Middle-Eastern politics to this day). Most importantly, these groups rely on a steady stream of new recruits due to the way they tend to have their established mujahadeen (deliberately) die for the cause. This means that some Muslims somewhere, usually near the regions in which jihad takes place, must support the terrorism for it to continue. "Death to the infidel" may not be the slogan of all Muslims, but it is most definitely the slogan of a noticeable segment of the Middle-Eastern (and Pakistani) Muslim populations defined by their willingness to fight or materially aid the stated goal of expelling the Western and Jewish occupiers from what they think are Muslim lands.

Note that phrase: "stated goal", because of course Islamism only has one true aim: to establish for its own leaders an empire in the Middle East and traditionally Muslim regions of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh from which those leaders can wage a megalomaniacal jihad to convert the entire world to Islam or the state of dhimmi (subjugation to Muslim rulers) at the end of a gun. Hell, oftentimes those same leaders are too stupid not to say that outright and spout it off to the whole world, and the Mumbai terrorists hunting down a Chabad House to attack in India certainly belies this true motive.

Now we return to the genuine point of yesterday's column: almost the entire world Muslim population has caught on to the lie. Not only are the more traditionally moderate Muslims opposing terrorism, the host populations who used to send their sons to Islamism have begun opposing it. Iraqis wish for a third choice in the false dichotomy between Islamist "resistance" and American occupation. While Hizballah has succeeded in making Lebanese culture more religious, a recent article in the New York Times says that the secular people have not had any very substantial restrictions placed upon their own lives and everyone resents Hizballah's bringing the IDF back to Lebanon. Even in Palestine, Islamism is going out of fashion in favor of old-fashioned Palestinian nationalism, because people see with their own eyes that Hamas haven't made life better for anyone except their own higher-ups. In the Arab emirates where enough money can buy any sin, it never stood a ghost of a chance. And in America, where biting prejudice forces incoming Muslims, like all new immigrant groups to America (yeah, we all went through this guys... the Jews, the Mexicans, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Indians... the hicks always hate you for your first generation or so in the country... it'll get better!), to quickly Americanize themselves, I've met Muslims who have no almost no conception of how Islamic terrorism can legitimize itself, because these American Muslims grew up entirely around other peaceful Muslims.

Last weeks terrorist attack in Mumbai killed almost 200 people, but they may yet also kill Islamism itself. Muslims don't want to be oppressed by religious dictators any more than they want to be oppressed by the American military (and accompanying mercenaries and oil-company employees), and now even those who once supported Islamism in the name of liberating themselves can quite clearly see that religious oppression is the fruit of Islamism, not a more free Muslim world.