Facetious or Just Ingenuous?

Muslims, contends Maher Arar, publisher of online magazine Prism, have nothing to apologize for. Of course they don't. Who ever claimed that the great mass of the Muslim ummah has anything to apologize about? They should, however, be dreadfully alarmed at the effect their religion has had on world opinion, because destructively delusional fanatics, taking from the Koran what empowers them to become faithful to violent jihad, has blemished what they hold dear.

And this fact, that Islam is held by many in today's world, to be a religion that fosters misunderstanding between people, that encourages its fundamentalist-minded followers to embrace violent jihad as their ideological raison d'etre has inspired fear and loathing everywhere these predators strike.

Muslims, ordinary, law-abiding, moderate Muslims, have reacted not with noticeable revulsion for the appearance of these vicious radicals, but with cries of "Islamophobia" in a world that is terrorized by the bloody depredations carried out in the name of the Prophet and Islam. Denying that mosques and social centres recruit among the young and the emotionally insecure.

And Maher Arar, like others before him, repeats the absurd contentions that only when Muslims in particular are involved in viciously anti-social attacks does religion come into question. Making comparisons between attacks conducted by violent anarchists - a rare breed - or environmental activists with a tendency to violence, as instances where religion is not front and center.

Obviously religion in these instances is not a factor, political ideology is. Entirely ignoring what is obvious to any casual news viewer, that it is Islam and Islam only that motivates its faithful to violent acts of aggression against both non-Muslims and moderate Muslims. That most of the terrorist-related activities carried out in today's world is by Muslims dedicated to fanaticism.

Yet the Muslim community bristles with righteous indignation at the obvious. And the Western public has reacted to that anger, by itself apologizing to the tender sensibilities of Muslims insisting they have been unfairly targeted. Victimized by society that views askance the activities of their violent cohorts. Yet Muslims are not held apart and with suspicion, and are not subject to random acts of violence in response.

Russia, China, Philippines, Indonesia, Spain, India, Somalia, Sudan, Britain, the United States and more, have all been subjected to horrendously brutal attacks that have slaughtered innocents in the name of Islamist jihad. Yet the nomenclature irritates Muslims. Who would much prefer such acts to be labelled those of terrorists, period. Do.not.mention.Islam.

Why not, when the perpetrators of these atrocities claim to be representing Islam at its most basic? Taking their cue from Koranic scriptures and from the historical details of the Prophet Mohammad's own writings, reflections and descriptions of attacking and murdering those Arabs, Christians and Jews who refused to embrace his newly-introduced religion of Islam.

Maher Arar is wrong in complaining that "Muslims are compelled to immediately condemn any fellow Muslim who is accused of terrorism or security-related crimes, in what seems to be a desperate, and perhaps even frightened attempt to avoid being painted with the same brush". In fact, this is their collective fear and guilt in their lack of attention to what has occurred with their religion.

Their neighbours do not hold them to account. Their neighbours rush to comfort them, to assure them that they are not held to be accountable for the atrocities carried out in the name of the religion they hold dear. Perhaps they should. Perhaps those in authority like Ottawa's chief of Police Services Vernon White, should refrain from rushing to reassure, taking pains to avoid saying this is a religion-rooted malady.

Perhaps it is time that the ordinary, law-abiding, Canadian value-sharing Muslim community took matters into their own hands, and began to demand that sermons and lectures from their clerics be more pro-actively denunciatory of jihad. The simple facts are that groups claiming to represent the Muslim community invite speakers with inflammatory messages having no place in Canadian society.

The facts are simple: there are too many contradictory messages being sent out through the Muslim community, here and abroad. Statistics indicate that the hearts and minds of a large segment of the Muslim community remain in the odd position of being uncertain where their loyalties should lie. And among them are too many who embrace jihad and the fiction that the world is ripe for universal sharia and a new global caliphate.

And when huge umbrage is taken over the characterizing of Islam as a religion fraught with danger for the world at large, perhaps it might help if Muslim eyes took seriously the news that emanates constantly from various parts of the world outlining how embattled the world has become, thanks to Islamist extremism.

From Afghanistan to Pakistan, Iran to Iraq, where Sunni hunt down and murder Shia Muslims, and where Shia see their ancient enemies, the Sunni, as deserving of death, and where both Sunni and Shia consider other sects like the Amadiya Muslims to be apostates and as such, worthy of death, the world sees a horribly dysfunctional religious community.

This should be the focus of alarmed Canadian Muslims, not their apprehension about "what the neighbours will think", but rather how they themselves should be reacting among themselves to the very real threats within society aimed also at themselves, from errantly criminal elements from within.