By Shadid Lewis

According to the anti-Islam speaker, Robert Spencer, Islamophobia  is merely a ‘rational response’ to ‘Islamic jihad’. He further claims there are few Muslims confront their own so called Islamic text and teachings that exhort to violence and ‘supremacism’. However, yet again we have another example of an anti-Islamist ignoring the real and true reasons for the recent violent incidents in Boston,Woolwich & Paris. The reason stated by the perpetrators themselves was ” because Muslims have been killed” , “Eye for an Eye, Tooth for Tooth”,”Because of the killing of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan”. These reason do not justify their actions, they do though tell us their motive. And clearly their motive was revenge, not some ideology of Islamic supremacy.

However people like Spencer and other bigots intentionally ignore this, yet incident after incident, this is stated by the perpetrators themselves as their motive. As As’ad AbuKhalil states in his book ” Bin Laden,Islam & Americas new war on terrorism”  pg.24 “By attributing all manifestations of Arab and Muslim political behavior to religion,authentic political Muslim grievances are easily avoided”. This is exactly what Spencer does in his article. He goes on to demonize all Muslims claiming, in response to journalist Melanie Phillips statements that “millions of Muslims in Britain & elsewhere reject such violent interpretations” of our religion. He claims there is absolutely no tangible evidence that they ( these kinds of Muslims) really exist at all, or if they do exist ,” they are doing absolutely nothing of any consequence to oppose this interpretation.” Now is this not clearly an attempt to demonize all Muslims as evil, terror supporters, by suggesting there is no evidence of such kinds of Muslims?

Spencer is not deaf or blind, but he willfully chooses to ignore the fact that there are indeed such kinds of Muslims. First of all, many planned attacks have been foiled because of tips from Muslims and Muslim communities. As L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca testified before Congress in 2011, seven of the past 10 al Qaeda plots in the United States were foiled by tips from the American Muslim community . NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that his department has a strong working relationship with the New York City Muslim community.A So called Islamic terror plot was prevented because of tips from the Canadian-Muslim community to law enforcement as well. So contrary to what he claims, Muslim don’t sit idly by doing nothing to address or stop these people and incidents. We also hear reports that many times these perpetrators had already been thrown out of mosque’s and ostracized by their local community for expressing extreme views. Such was the case with the older brother among the Boston bombers and on top of that he and his younger marijuana smoking brother barely attended the mosque any way. France 24 News reported the suspect in the stabbing of the soldier in Paris had also been thrown out of a local mosque for expressing radical ideas. So don’t sit there and claim Muslim have not really done anything to confront these issues.

Spencer through out his article continues to claim the problem is Islam itself. He even claimed the perpetrators pointed explicitly to Islam to explain and Justify their actions, yet we all saw and heard the Woolwich killers explicitly say ” Eye for an eye, tooth for tooth” and That it was because ” Muslims have been killed in Muslim lands” to explain their actions. A Quranic statement was mentioned which was “Fight them as they fight us” which clearly implied the perpetrators , although wrong and unjustified, saw their deed as a response to Muslims being fought against rather than some open call to kill all infidels or some so called attempt to impose Islamic supremacy over the UK. But again, this is , I believe purposefully ignored by Spencer and his cohorts because this does not fit their narrative of the aggressive , evil Islamic jihadist. As mentioned earlier, they don’t want to acknowledge or address legitimate political grievances of Muslims, which would force them to admit their wrong doings against Muslims. So instead, just blame it all on Islam.

Spencer even seemed irritated that after the Woolwich killing, that the media reported on the many backlash incidents against Muslims. He stated ,” the mainstream media has embarked upon its usual search for “backlash” attacks against innocent Muslims, avid as always to portray Muslims as victims in the wake of an Islamic jihad attack against Infidels.” His statement seems to imply that perhaps the Muslims are not victims at all and deserve the backlash. So we see this as a clear proof that he does not want to acknowledge any wrong doing against Muslims. Muslims bend over backwards to apologize and issue statements of condemnation, but he’s clearly incensed that the media would dare to report on Muslims getting attacked  in a backlash.

So he claims we see the real point of the hysteria over the “Islamophobia”, which again he basically claims has been the warning of  advancing jihad violence and Islamic supremacism . However no, your hysteria has not been realized by these incidents because none were committed based on claims of calls to kill all infidels, or Islamic supremacy. They were all committed based on revenge for the killings of Muslim civilians and children and unjust invasions of Muslims lands. Again , this does not justify what these people did. This is however what these killers stated right out of their mouths. So you can continue to ignore that in order to justify your clear bigotry against Muslims, but we all see the elephant in the room. That is the motive always being stated as “killings of Muslims”, “unjust invasion of Muslim lands”” Killing of Muslim children” and “an eye for an eye”.

The bigoted, hate filled attacks by the EDL, terrorist neo crusader Anders Breivik , who referenced Spencer more than 50 times, and the shooting up and vandalism of Sikh temples and Mosque’s are the fruit of you and your cohorts work, and the blood is on your hands!