Is Islam a violent religion? Does Islam promote violence? How should we deal with Islamic terrorism? These questions have been circulating across the media in what seems to be a persistent attack on Islam and Muslims worldwide. The media has definitely succeeded in spreading a false narrative on Islam portraying Muslims as violent people who adhere to a violent religion with controversial teachings.
Bill Maher and Sam Harris, two prominent atheists who reject the notion of religion, have been criticising Islam and regarding it as a real threat in today’s world. In his show, “Real Time With Bill Maher”, Maher, Sam Harris and Ben Affleck got into a heated debate over “Radical Islam” where Maher and harris were very affirmative in their view that Islam is a serious threat that needs to be dealt with. Maher even said that Islam is the “only religion that acts like a mafia”. Would Bill Maher dare say a similar thing about other religions? I don’t think so.
Bill Maher and Sam Harris are not the only people critical of Islam. In a recent CNN interview with Reza Aslan, a religions scholar, CNN’s Don Lemon and Alison Cemerota carried out a conversation about Islamophobia with radical generalisations on Muslims. Aslan pointed out that these generalisations are the definition of bigotry and that one can not use two or three examples of extremism and generalise it on all people.
To prove Reza Aslan’s point, there are approximately 15,000 Al-Qaeda members, 60,000 Taliban members, and 32,000 IS members. While there are 1.6 billion Muslims around the world, this means that only 0.007% of Muslims are affiliated with terrorist organisations. Not only is that a fraction of a fraction, but this number also proves the duplicity of the media.
This negative sentiment towards Muslims and Islam has been growing in a more than 10 years period, specifically after 9/11, when the hijackers were reported to be Muslims affiliated with Al-Qaeda, even though it was never proven that Al-Qaeda was behind the bombing. A month later, the United States invaded Afghanistan as the first country in their series of “War on Terror” and in response to the 9/11 bombing.
In 2003, Bush declared Saddam Hussein to have links with Al-Qaeda and waged a war on Iraq on the basis of his foreign policy course labeled the Bush Doctrine: preemptive action is justified when launched in order to protect national security. Saddam Hussein was also accused of possessing WMD’s and producing nuclear weapons, which eventually were never proven to be true.
Interestingly, Since 9/11, the US and Israel have bombed 14 Muslim countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, Iran, Sudan, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt and Tunisia. More than half of these countries are in the Middle East.
The Middle East is a vital part of the world, rich in natural resources with a strategic position. It has been a target for colonisation for centuries. Adolf Berle, one of the leading liberal advisors for many presidents, said that if the United States can control Middle East energy, that will provide them with “substantial control of the world”. That statement bears a lot of significance in today’s world.
The west, as an imperial power, has two fundamental issues with Islam. The first is that they know that political Islam can never turn into a neoliberal or a pro-western regime, which of course poses a serious issue to them. The second is that Islam happens to be the religion of the most vital region in the world, the Middle East. The negative sentiment towards Islam, that was discussed in the beginning, was efficient in mobilising the public opinion to accept the many invasions in the Middle East. It is an old United States policy, demonise the enemy to justify the invasion.
As Muslims are being condemned by the media because of the actions of a minority that does not represent them, the United States is allowed to commit far worse actions that do represent its government and foreign policy without being condemned. On that, what George Orwell said comes to mind: “actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits, but according to who does them”.
