The mood in the Middle East is rapidly changing. The elation of the Arab Spring, which led to prosperity and an economic and social upturn in the lives of millions of Arabs, has now deteriorated into a sense that significant dangers are stalking the Arab-Muslim world. Arabic TV, especially Al-Jazeera, has been broadcasting programs asking if bloodshed is the only mission of Islam, and if jihad [war in the service of Islam] still motivates believers to invade other countries with abandon and indulge in worldwide slaughter.
Given the current situation, the Middle East is obsessed with asking itself: Who is responsible for the Muslims' catastrophe? And what keeps us chained behind, while the rest of the world forges ahead in social, economic and technological progress? Needless to say, the imams do not blame themselves. They claim that to change the situation we need only more and closer study and practice of the Islamic faith.
As always, our Islamic society, constantly at odds with itself, blames everyone for our misfortunes. In the days of the Prophet (S.A.A.S.), we blamed the Jews of Khaybar in the Arabian Peninsula for our ills. Now the imams who head the militant Islamist organizations tell us that the Jews, a tiny people who pose no threat to the might of Islam, are responsible for all our ills and for all our failures.
Islamic radicals, however, hate not only the Jews but also the Christians, who have become, we are told, our sworn enemies. Christianity, like Judaism, is also vilified. The history of our hatred for the Christians began with the Crusades, and over the years the same hated Crusaders became the hated European imperialists and the hated colonialists.
The hatred for the Christian West is founded on a sense of deprivation, of humiliation and inferiority, of being threatened and exploited, all of which cast doubt on the eternal message of Islam as the only up-to-date religion, destined to rule the world and invalidate the other religions. The Islamic sages who interpret the will of Allah say that both Christianity as well as Judaism, while monotheistic, are anachronistic, and while temporarily they can exist -- with the patronage of, and overshadowed by, Islam -- eventually all Christians and Jews will convert to Islam. » | Ali Salem | Wednesday, August 21, 2013
