10 Reasons Why Muslims Must Stop Trying To Prove Their Humanity After Every “Terror” Attack

Read original article titled 75 reasons why Muslims Must Stop With Their Terrorism Condemnation Ritual by Ismail Ibrahim on the Muslim Matters or read just ten of the reasons below;

1. The Muslim community should not condemn terrorist crimes by Muslims, not because Muslims condone or justify the act of crime[1], but because of the disproportionate focus on their disempowered community at the expense of those in power who have the same, similar or even greater crimes to their name, which go either unreported or underreported.[2]
2. Condemnations cannot be a healthy entry point into the ideological fight against terrorism and the discussion on its causes, which is where the focus of the debate should be.[3]
3. Condemning implies Muslims are in need to lift themselves as a faith community from sub-human barbarism to humanness – a negative by-product of the being in a state of perpetual condemnation.
4. The killing of innocent civilians is a monstrosity. To be suspected of condoning something as monstrous and being asked or expected to disassociate oneself from it, simply because of one’s faith, is grossly unfair. Muslims are bearing the brunt of this.
5. Peoples of other religions and no religion are assumed to be innocent and outraged when one of their affiliates perpetrates acts of crime and terrorism. Until the same presumption of innocence is not afforded to Muslims, there would be no reason for Muslims to persist in condemnations when they could clearly be futile – the very assumption of guilt leveled at Muslims is destructive.[4]
6. Condemnations are not proven to shield the Muslim community and its prominent figures from accusations of extremism. BBC presenter Andrew Neil, the UK’s ex-Prime Minister David Cameron and the UK defense secretary Michael Fallon all grotesquely implicated a prominent Imam in the UK, Suliman Gani, with extremism and supporting ISIS and put his family in danger by doing so, even though this Imam is on the record of rejecting ISIS, terrorism, extremism and violence.[5]
7. The corpus of Quran and prophetic tradition is sufficient in condemning all acts of criminality and terrorist atrocities. This is immutable and will remain unchanged from crime to crime. The Quran and prophetic tradition do not have a shelf life, nor do they expire or are in need of being refreshed or updated. Muslims must refuse to be trapped in the condemnation cycle on behalf of their faith. Most non-Muslims would have probably memorized the relevant passages from the Quran and prophetic tradition in this regard.
8. Muslims should not fall into the trap of become mouthpiece and tool of western governments, their agencies and right-wing ideologues that possess ulterior anti-Muslim motives through the medium of Muslims issuing such condemnations.[6] Those who have these ulterior motives tend to brandish words like ‘Islamism’[7] in response to Muslim terrorism. Just as anti-Zionism is sometimes used to disguise Judeophobia[8], attacks on ‘Islamism’ are used as a front to attack Islam itself, and by extension the Muslims. Condemnations perpetuate the exploitation of these ulterior motives.
9. Muslims protest at how people of other ethnicities, religions and orientations are not implicated, or are asked to condemn crimes, when one of their affiliates perpetrates an act of criminality or terrorism. Nay, those acts are actively shielded by media many outlets and politicians from the label of terrorism, demonstrating the West’s selective application of the terrorism label, or the bar of terrorism being lowered in the case of Muslims. The case of the Chapel Hill shootings is an example of this[9], which can be contrasted with Francois Hollande’s hasty judgement on the Nice event as an act of terrorism even before investigations had started on the killer and his motives.[10]
10. Extant Muslim condemnations, as well as western media coverage of terrorist attacks across the world, are lopsided. Terrorism in Bangladesh, Burma, Central African Republic, Indian-administered Kashmir, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Yemen, Saudi Arabia etc., in which tens or even hundreds of people die at once, do not attract the same condemnations or media coverage as a police shooting incident in the United States, an airport attack in Western Europe or a hostage situation in Australia would do.[11] Even al-Azhar, the GCC, Egypt, the Arab League[12] and Turkey[13] publish their condemnations, most recently for the Nice attack. The level of condemnations from Muslim organizations, not only in the West but across the world, seems only to mirror the level media coverage in the western media for terrorism that occurs in the West, which – according to John Simpson of the BBC – is ‘grotesquely selective.’[14] The selective expression of outrage is antithetical to Muslim values, especially given that the first victims of terrorism are Muslims in Muslim countries; and many a time, Muslims have endangered their own lives in trying to stop terrorist acts in their tracks, but this does not as much coverage as the spilled blood of Americans and Europeans does.[15]