Do Muslim Lives Matter?

"If we lost all humanity, if you allow the slaughter of a nation for five and a half years, after all the leaders of the international community declared the right of these people to revolt against their government, then expect Islamic State -- and many other Islamic States in other forms and shapes."
"All this crazy violence has a goal [to divide societies, to] make Sunnis feel that no matter what happens, they don't have any other option."
Michel Kilo, Syrian dissident

Syrian airforce pounds Nusra in northern Aleppo -- AMN

Mr. Kilo feels that a lack of Western outrage against the plight of Syrians represents racism at its ugly best. Perhaps Mr. Kilo is suffering from amnesia; for when the West has intervened in the Middle East the clamour is deafening from that source claiming that the West is intent on subordinating Muslims and Arabs while busy purloining all their assets in the best imperialist/colonial traditions.

He may also be overlooking the fact that there is such a collective entity as the Arab League, formed to present a united front and it is logical to assume that with their combined armies they are sufficiently well armed and potently conditioned to take on the responsibility they owe to one of their member states' citizens, to protect the helpless population of Sunnis (good to recall that Sunnis represent the majority in the Middle East and worldwide) against their Shiite Alawite dictator.

So why then is it the responsibility of Western nations to airlift and ship their military apparatus and troops to the defense once again of an Arab nation that is riven with tribal and sectarian animosities that is slaughtering its own? A situation that is more typical than not, in the Middle East. And the outcome always has been resentment followed by both verbal and physical attacks against the Western interference?

The West, as it happens, is involved in trying to quell and remove the atrocity-loving Islamic State from its geographic caliphate. But it is the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad that has ferociously and brutally killed hundreds of thousands of Syrians, not ISIL. ISIL is busier slaughtering ethnic and religious minorities, though it does favour killing Shiites and Sunnis insufficiently vested in fanaticism as well. It is an admitted failing that the West did not challenge and remove Assad.

But where in all of this is the Arab/Muslim responsibility to defend its own humanity? After all, it is Arab Muslims that have attacked Paris, London, Boston, Madrid, New York, Orlando and Jerusalem. And nations such as France have their agenda rather full, fighting Islamist terror in Mali and elsewhere in Africa, as well as protecting their own geographic turf. So, certainly, Muslim lives matter, and why don't Muslim leaders behave as though they do?

The savagery that the world witnesses on the part of Saudi Arabia, Iran, Libya, Lebanon and Syria is never-ending, after all. Fundamentalist Islam has swept away whatever 'moderation' appears to have existed in traditional Islam, by merely studying Islamic history and the Koran and the sacred scriptures reflecting Mohammed's values and instructions to the faithful.

Certainly Muslim lives matter. Again: why don't Muslims care about Muslim lives? The wobbly tropes of racism and xenophobia are tired and ragged. They should be put to rest. If indeed fundamentalist Islamists represent only a minuscule proportion of the peace-loving faithful in Islam, why are the greater majority of that hugely populous religion not spurning and rising up against the fanatics that have besmirched their religion and in the process terrorized the world?