What do want to do about it? Not have free speech, open practice of religion? You want to arrest people who criticize their government when it doesn't align with their values, their world view? You think they should all "go back home where they came from?" Immigrants are the absolute worst when it comes to judgement of other immigrant groups. My dad is the same. So fucking intolerant. That article is mostly drivel. I warned them 11 years ago? What the actual fuck does that mean? What should anyone have done 11 years ago? Stormed the mosques? Ghettoized Muslims? Put them in camps? Build special prisons for anyone who is deemed a "radical", or has been exposed to radical speech? Who are any of us to judge? We, the so-called West, along with Russia (which likes to talk about the West, but is just as complicit and, in fact, just as Western as any of the usual suspects), have absolutely ravaged the Middle East, Africa, and Asia over the last centuries, but we're not radical, we're OK, we're fine, it's them who should leave, we belong where we are because we're the good guys, right? We have democracy, and they should have to submit to us, all-powerful benevolent overlords of Earth, the great peacemakers? Never mind the millions enslaved, the millions murdered, the millions raped, the millions tortured?
We act like it's over, scholars talk about post-colonialism and neocolonialism. It's very much still ongoing, and people are going to fight back, and fight back hard. They'll band together based on shared values that will become more important than ever before, because those values will remind them of how they've been wronged. The individuals themselves, they might have very little to do with the nuts and bolts of colonization. But they are affected by it in their daily existence, they are reminded by their parents, by their peers, by their difference, and every single moment is slightly emptier because of it. Give someone a cause, especially when they are causeless, and they'll fight for it, even if they absolutely no idea what it is, even if they are dumb as a sack of rocks. Mostly because they really are ignorant fools. Give them a sense of belonging, togetherness. Make them feel cool, like gangsters. Go back to their roots. Be real OG Muslim in a world that you never quite fit into anyway. Have a secret, be an agent, make your difference a special difference, a noble one, a dangerous difference.
The desperation and flagrant disregard for biopolitical power that comes with suicide bombing, in particular, is a terrifying thing. I wouldn't underestimate what someone goes through to commit such an act. If you've lived your life with a neighbor who reached that level, who was willing to go that far, then you haven't done your own part. None of us have. What's worse, is that we actually do the opposite. We make it worse. We buy from Israel, we write bullshit investigative journalism pieces with unethically obtained hearsay, we say that our lives, what we do, our jobs, our problems, these are separate ones, we can't bother ourselves too much with all this nonsense because it's just not practical, we've got money to make, mouths to feed, but we believe that we've earned all of that, that it came by our own good decisions, by the sweat of our brow. We pulled up our bootstraps and we worked hard and we got a little something and now we're going to cling to it at all costs, and be damned with your wailing about how every cent, every sip of coffee, every bus journey or carpool or bike ride, every sandwich is begat, in some way, in some form, from the deep, deep suffering of millions of people, living and dead.
Anyway, this shit has absolutely nothing to do with Islam. If the Persians had beat the Arabs, it could just as well be Zoroastrianism we were talking about. I'm so sick of the same argument, it's so fucking obvious, but people can't see it because their eyes are clouded by ignorance and fear.
