Every time there is a terrorist attack linked to the religion of special needs, the liberal racist appears — a character whose hatred of civilization leads him to explain everything with the hypothesis of “Western imperialism”, which is summarized in the West being the only culprit of all evil in the world, from the extinction of the dinosaurs to the sinking of the Titanic.
However, there are uncomfortable facts for this hypothesis that make you wonder if its proponents are not simply projecting — at the end of the day, if you only have a hammer everything looks like a nail. There are three types of inconvenient facts to the “Western imperialism” hypothesis:
• Violence between Muslims: Anyone who approaches current events facts in hand, should find that the main victims of Islamic fundamentalism are their coreligionists. The examples of barbarism between Sunnis and Shiites do not find explanation in the line of thinking of “Western imperialism” which has to do less with this issue, than Stephen Hawking in the Athletism Olympics.
• Islamic terrorism against non-Western targets: Besides violence between Muslims, another phenomenon that finds no explanation if Muslim terrorism is a response to “Western imperialism” is the attack on populations that are decidedly non-Western, with whom, in theory, they would have no conflict whatsoever. Would anyone have the courtesy to tell me how “Western imperialism” is responsible for the attack on the temple of Baal, the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan, multiple interfaith massacres between Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs in the Indian subcontinent (India, Pakistan , Bangladesh, Kashmir…) or the Bali bombing?
• Islamic phenomenon: As Sam Harris has asked, where are the Palestinian Christian terrorists? They have suffered the same humiliations their Muslim neighbors have (and, perhaps, even more) and yet, they do not tie bombs to their chests and go to Israel to blow up as many civilians as possible. The only thing that changes is the superstition of each other, while everything else remains constant. If terrorism was the answer to the imperalism, there wouldn’t be a marked Islamic dominance in the subject — as a matter of fact, one would expect there would be a marked tendency of Tibetan Buddhist terrorism, in view of China’s imperialist occupation but, curiously enough, they are more concerned with chasing down their coreligionists dissidents Dorje Shugden and promoting the charlatan and good for nothing Dalai Lama.
Until there is a satisfactory explanation where the “Western imperialism” can account for these facts rather than ignore them, there is no other choice than to rule out the hypothesis… no matter how much it hurts to West haters.
