There are a number of Christian terror groups are still out there, killing and torturing. (6 modern-day Christian terrorist groups)
Hindus in remote India still kills people on witchcraft charges. (Fighting Modern-Day Witch Hunts in India’s Remote Northeast)
Buddhist monks are fanning ethnic cleansing in Myanmar. (Straying From the Middle Way: Extremist Buddhist Monks Target Religious Minorities)
Communist factions are still bombing and burning in some corner of the world or other. (10 Left-Wing Terrorist Organizations From Around The World)
Every religion has its fair share of people who are violent and intolerant.
But, for most religions they are outliers. No one takes them as mainstream. Violent and intolerant people in most religions do not have funds, resources or connections to worry about.
Islam is different.
Because the violent and intolerant people of Islam are sitting on the biggest funds and resources in the world. And that doesn’t just include the declared and identified terror groups. Governments and communities practising intolerance, human rights abuse and violence in the name of religion/god are part and parcel of the scenario.
I am looking at the lowest common denominator among the Islamist intolerance and human rights abuse - Salafism. Following is a map of the Salafist world.
Then comes the map of their resource:
They have gas. And that makes them dangerous. That also makes them a target.
Muslims in the post-WWII world were led by people like Gamal Abdel Nasser, Mahathir Muhammad, Muhammad Ali Jinnah et al. They were liberals, and they were tolerant to a high degree.
Muslims were led by Ottoman, Abbasid, Idrisid, Mughal and a number of other empires. Those were largely liberal (at least liberal enough for their times) and sometimes highly tolerant. Ottomans sheltered Jews persecuted across Europe and Mughals experimented with Hindu-Muslim religious fusion.
In fact, the average Christian was way more violent and intolerant than the average Muslim in the middle ages. The Christian Crusades were worse than the Islamic Jihads.
But, the Crusades ceased. With the advent of Protestantism, Lutheranism and other more tolerant types of Christianity the whole religion grew out of its violent and intolerant past. The Spanish and French killed or force-converted entire populations in America and Africa. The British ruled half the world without any religious oppression.
The religious fringe for all religions withdrew to the fringe by 1970s. Only the communist threat remained. It was the time of so-called clash of civilisations - the liberal and democratic West versus the communist East.
In a hurry to end that status quo, the US created its greatest folly. And that involved Muslims.
By the 1980s USSR became the biggest oil power in the world, and it was their only foreign currency earner. President Ronald Reagan hatched the brilliant plan to offset Russian dominance in the world market with an alternative source.
That source was in the Gulf, and sitting on it were the fringest of fringe Muslims, desert dwellers who were denied any culture, literacy or civilisation for long. Arabia was ruled by desert Emirs who had only one claim to fame - superiority in horseback warfare (yes, in mid 20th century).
The US funded, trained and armed those fringe Muslims, the only followers of hardline Salafi movement, to extract, export and defend the oil. The whole balance of the world was reverted.
The result?
The most awesome strategic victory in history: Fall of Soviet Union and the Eastern Block, followed by capitalism in China and Indo-China. It was a victory of trade and diplomacy over military interventions.
The Muslims were the newest weapon of the US against the Red Empire. President Reagan also funded, trained and armed Afghan Mujahideens (groups that followed another fringe school of Islam, and who also were poor, illiterate and extremely backward) to fight against Russian occupation forces and heir collaborators.
Pakistan was already a US ally, and a bulwark against Soviet presence in South Asia. Mujahideens found a safe heaven in Pakistan, in areas dominated by gun-trotting Muslim ignorants, the violent fringe.
With all the oil, money and guns… the US propped up the Muslim fringe. It is like handing free guns, money and protection to KKK, hoping that they will be under control.
They are not under control anymore.
The little control they had - strong-man rulers of Iraq, Syria and Libya were either ousted or in trouble because of US intervention.
Illiterate followers of fringe Islam became the mainstream, and they have no scruples or control to stop them. They are not even articulate enough to make sense of their philosophy (the communists were way better in that regard).
One of my friends was a student of medicine in Morocco. Two of his classmates were Afghans who had fought as the Mujahideen. In the second year of their studies the Afghan boys packed up and left, telling that war was easier and more fun than studying medicine.
Another of my friend was a WHO worker in Khyber. At one time when he went with his team to immunise a village, the villagers took shelter in a cave, put artillery at the mouth of the cave and started shooting with assault rifles. All that because they believed that polio vaccines somehow takes away their Iman.
Yet another of friend was a hospital steward in Saudi Arabia. He was charged with weed smoking, and his tauba spared him from death. He came back with one of his hands cut off.
These are the people the US funded, trained and armed.
They key words are not Muslim or Islam. The keyword is fringe. Whatever religion violent and intolerant people belong to, they operate in the same way. With Islam they have more power.
For us, this is not the face of Islam any more:
…nor this:
…nor this:
…nor this:
We have successfully marginalised those who should be mainstream, and mainstreamed those who should remain in the political margins.
The story is the opposite for all other major faiths, including even communism.
And that’s why Islam receives so much negativity.
