HAS THE WEST’S WAR AGAINST ISLAM RADICALISED WESTERN MUSLIMS?

The so-called ‘war on terror’ is now seen for what it really is; a euphemism for a war against Islam. It began as a war fuelled by Western greed and power as European colonialists divided and conquered Islamic lands in order to plunder their riches. The war about religion and beliefs had long run its earlier course during the Crusades. By the nineteenth and twentieth century it was no longer about religion; it was about oil. Today it has come full circle; it’s still about oil, as well as regional control and hegemony, but for those that resent the West’s intrusion into their lands and the plundering of their wealth, religion has become the means rather than the reason for their determination to fight back.

As Europeans and Americans colonised and controlled Islamic lands through war and influence so Islamic peoples, many of them fleeing the war poverty colonialists had brought to them, searched for a better life in the West. But, wherever they went to settle in Western lands, racism was all that greeted them. Even those that had converted to Christianity were not immune from attack. Colour alone was enough to cause abuse. Anti-discrimination laws needed to be enacted in a bid to stop racism but it was never enough. The abuse continued and in the sixties many African-Americans and those of West Indian and African descent in Europe began to turn to Islam as they rejected Western abuse.

Then 9/11 happened. The West’s ‘war on terror’ was soon seen as a war against Islam. Islam in Europe and the US at first rejected the violence the West accused the Muslim extremists of committing but then those Muslims in the West became victimised themselves by the communities they lived in. While wars raged in the Middle East and Central Asia, hatreds fuelled by resentments have now boiled over into the streets of Europe and America. And fuelling the resentments is a mainstream media full of racists dedicated to stirring up hatreds by relentlessly demeaning and marginalising Muslims that live in the West.

Wanton acts of extreme violence by those that profess to be Muslims are held up as being typical of all Muslims. Their violence is used to promote more hatred and so the cycle of violence and hatreds are perpetuated.

The recent violence in the West by radicalised Muslims – the Boston bombings; the riots in Sweden; the horrific hacking to death of a soldier on London’s streets – are all as a result of the West’s media promoting Western exceptionalism and demonising Islam.

Rupert Murdoch’s various mainstream media outlets have all played a major role in the promotion of these hatreds. In the US commentators at Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal have contributed to the hatred; in the UK Murdoch’s Sun and The Times newspaper have made their contribution to inspire hatred. In Australia racists like Tim Blair (read the comments that accompany this lunatics propaganda) and Piers Akerman at Murdoch’s Daily Telegraph in Sydney (who even tried to blame the Victorian bushfires of 2009 on Islamists), and Andrew Bolt at Murdoch’s Herald-Sun in Melbourne have all sought to promote hatred of Islam throughout the West. Their hatreds inspire revenge. These hate merchants at Murdoch’s online papers open their columns to comments from people who are attracted to this kind of Islamophobic racism. For the most part dissenting comments are not tolerated.

As a result, the worldwide anti-Islam movement is growing. The extreme right-wing racist neo-Nazi English Defence League has already organised anti-Islam demonstrations as a reaction to the slaying of a British soldier in London yesterday.

As the hatreds of each side feed off each other, so the violence associated with those hatreds grow. Provocations by the right-wing arm of the mainstream media, mostly belonging to Murdoch, do nothing to relieve the problem; they only fuel the hatreds that radicalise people from both sides.