Too Polite to Mention

 Persecution of Islam On the Rise 

We often forget that Muslims are dying violent deaths every day.  Arguably, Islam is the most persecuted religion in the world.  But what is also forgotten is that Islam is also the most persecuting religion on the globe--and that its persecution is most often directed at fellow Muslims.  The world is exploding with Muslim upon Muslim violence: moreover, it is not just a recent phenomenon.  It is, however, a growing problem.  Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya, Afghanistan, and Pakistan have all experienced increasing Islamic persecution of Muslims this past year. 

Some have argued that this is due to a lack of unifying structures and authorities.
  Islam has suffered, it is suggested, from toxic decentralisation which has allowed the various sects to war amongst themselves.  Islam has never recovered from the dissolution of the Caliphate in 1924.  Islam is a religion which preaches and demands submission--submission to Allah, through his rulers upon earth.  But there are far too many rulers, each demanding submission from everyone else.  Islam craves a world-wide ruler--the Caliph, as long as the Caliph is of us, not the cursed Shi'ites, or Sunnis, or Wahhabists, or whatever. 

Regardless, Islam right now has no large, authoritative institution with a "tradition of existence" that can temper the forces of zealotry and puritanism sweeping through the Muslim world.  Instead, would-be Muslim Martin Luthers and mini Mahdis issue more fatwahs than Luther had theses, telling why vast numbers of non-believers must be slaughtered or converted, why Islam will conquer the world, and how theological backsliding [that is, other Islamic sects] or compromise is a crime punishable by death.  [Jonah Goldberg, The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas (New York: Sentinel/Penguin, 2012), p. 239.]

This internecine Islamic hatred is reportedly provoking many Islamic people to leave their religion behind.   To secular Western folk, however, the violence is not intrinsic to Islam itself.  Rather, it is a product of primitiveness, of being captured in a time-warp of poverty, ignorance, and pre-Western economic development.  Once Islamic people get a decent Western education and adopt Western political ideologies based upon human rights and freedoms, the violence will fade away.  This arrogant and naive view is an extension of the West's secularism--that is, all religions are not to be taken seriously; at best they are private belief systems not to be allowed to intrude in any public squares or places. 

The West thus refuses to take Muslim upon Muslim violence seriously.  At best it is not a problem we need to be concerned with at all.  At worst it is something which Islamic nations will "grow out of" along the road to modernity.  Two years ago, Western leaders were prattling on endlessly and gushing profusely about the Arab Spring, believing that huge progress was about to be made.  They forgot that "Islam" means submission--if not voluntarily and willingly, then forced.

There are some things that ought not to be mentioned in polite conversation.