"Why do they hate us?" (updated)

Once again the Muslim world is going crazy and we are seeing murderous rampages. And once again the pundits are asking "Why do they hate us?"

Or, even more pointedly, Hillary Clinton asked "How could this happen? How could this happen in a country we helped liberate, in a city we helped save from destruction?"

There is no shortage of people willing to immediately say that the US is the reason Muslims go on killing sprees in the name of Mohammed.

Russia Today interviews a supposed "expert" who said "Washington and America are still living in their own Western bubble where they believe they don’t have any chain of responsibility for the events that have happened to transform countries like Libya."

The editor for Al Quds al Arabi writes, and Juan Cole agrees:

US interferences in Arab and Muslim affairs in favor of Israel, its occupation, and Judaization of the holy places, and the US’s embrace of groups hostile to Islam and Muslims are the main reason for the current scourge and instability, and even wars in our countries.

This is idiocy.

While the Benghazi murders seem to have been pre-planned and deliberate by radical Islamists, the riots that have broken out in Egypt, Lebanon, Yemen and elsewhere - where more people have died - are different. They are almost identical to the Mohammed cartoon riots of 2005 against Denmark.

In both cases, individuals decided to do something provocative towards Islam. In the first case it was to prove the importance of free speech, and this time it was a crude attempt to incite hate against Islam, but in neither case was the nation that hosted the offensive media responsible for it. In fact, in both cases the nations' laeaders distanced themselves from the incidents.

Yet in both cases the Muslims rioted against those blameless host countries.

In other words, if you are going to ask why the Muslims hate the US, you must also ask why they hated Denmark - rioting outside Danish embassies, and causing deaths, just like today.

All of a sudden, the self-righteous assumption that US policy is the source of their hate is revealed to be absurd. Denmark is hardly a symbol of oppression against Muslims.

The common denominator isn't that the West is offending Islam; it is that Muslims today are almost eager to act offended - so they can flex their political muscles.

There is no doubt that many Muslima resent the West. So does pretty much everyone else in the non-aligned movement. But they don't start murderous riots at the drop of a hat.

Islam is a supremacist religion, and a supremacist political philosophy. If it was only a personal religion it wouldn't be so terrible - every religion believes that it is superior to others. But as a set of political philosophies, the idea of supremacy is dangerous.

Muslims are taught that their way is superior - and that history is on their side, . They are told that inevitably Islam will take over the world, and it is a superior political movement compared to liberal democracy or any other political system.

But in reality, most of the Muslim world suffers from infighting, from a backwards culture, from the inability to progress. And they see the Western world has left them in the dust since the 1600s.

When the truth clashes with what people are taught, it tends to make them touchy. The Muslim world suffers from a mass inferiority complex as they see the success of people who they believe should be second-class dhimmis under their control.

It is natural for people to be jealous. It is even natural to be resentful against those who are doing better than you. But resorting to violence for ridiculous perceived slights against one's honor is only natural in the Muslim world. And part of the reason is because of their complete inability to take responsibility.

So please spare us the pseduo-intellectual analyses that blame America for Muslim violence. If the Muslim world is to ever progress, it requires that their members take personal responsibility for their actions. That isn't a Western concept, but apparently communities that embrace that simple idea are the ones that will ultimately prosper.

As long as self-hating Westerners keep blaming the victims and holding the criminals blameless, they are encouraging the next round of senseless murders.

UPDATE: Israel's Channel 2 reports that Arabs protesting in Acre today said that only an Islamic caliphate will cause the violence to stop. "Only Islamic rule throughout the world will make peace. Jews and Christians can live without fear under the wings of Islam." (h/t Yoel)