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Tuesday, November 01, 2005

A single sentence

Little Green Footballs pointed out this editorial at The Guardian, from a British Muslim leader arguing for the re-establishment of the caliphate and a unified Muslim world.

I will leave it to others to dissect this example of pseudo-scholarship, but one sentence jumped out to me:

The lack of legitimate leadership, coupled with a sense of humiliation, has led to widespread political instability in the Muslim world with its consequences for the wider world.
It is an interesting sentence in a few ways:

* It implicitly blames the West for Islamic terror - if only the West hadn't sliced up the Islamic world then there would be no need for terror! The ease with which Muslims can escape any sense of personal responsibility is amazing - murders and terror are never their fault, rather they are inevitable consequences of outside factors.

* It says explicitly that if the Muslim world would not have a sense of humiliation, it would not be a security threat. Of course, what is unsaid is that the sense of humiliation is directly because Islam has lost to the West in every sphere of influence - militarily, scientifically, culturally. Which of course means that for that "sense of humiliation" to disappear, the West must surrender and let the Muslims take over the world - all for security.

* The division of Arab states by the West happened some 90 years ago. Arab states have been independent for some 50 years. Yet for some reason, they have never coalesced into a single Arab or Muslim state - even though nothing is stopping them from doing exactly that! And who does the writer (Osama Saeed) blame for this lack of Muslim unity? The evil West, of course!

Amazing how a single sentence can accidentally betray so much truth about the mindset in Islam today.