As Muslims, we are saddened to hear of the deaths of innocent civilians being killed, like those in the recent Kenyan attack. We are also outraged against the perpetrators, and condemn them strongly without reservation.

However, this is not the only part of this sad story, for the truth behind the attack in Kenya Mall, is not some isolated event of terrorists attacking a civilian shopping mall, but rather it is just one piece in an ongoing series of events initiated by U.S. interference in the region. We are told to blame the Shabaab militants of Somalia for the violence in the region, but truth is, the violence and injustice started long before their existence – in the form of American Terrorism backed by their allies Ethiopia and Kenya, which has invaded Somalia and killed thousands of Somali civilians.

Muslims are told to condemn terrorism done by people that happen to be Muslim. Western pundits and media like to claim that the Shabaab did the attack ‘in the name of Islam’, but this not actually true. Muslim terrorists, like all terrorists, usually claim they fight for justice. The people they fight for are merely those they have sympathy for, who they consider are ‘their people’. When someone comes and kills ‘their people’ and they cannot prevent it, these terrorists then adopted the Western tactic of deliberately targeting the aggressors civilians, in order to dissuade them – and protect their own people. Anyone who wants to argue that Western armies do not target civilians deliberately, needs to study World War 1 and 2 where ‘saturation bombing’, ‘starvation’ and Nuclear weapons were used (and that was just the enemies of the Nazis! Hitler was actually outraged when WINSTON CHURCHILL started bombing German cities – Hitler had thought that bombing civilian cities was barbaric!).

The Western way of war is essentially that it is only deemed ‘evil’ to kill civilians unless it is ‘necessary’. What this ‘moral code’ actually says is ‘don’t kill civilians for no reason/for fun’. But no one kills civilians for ‘no reason’ – every brutal oppressor, murderer and genocidal army has killed civilians when it thinks it is ‘necessary’.

Kenya, Ethiopia and the USA have killed thousands of Somali civilians, and yet demand that Muslims should apologise profusely when angry Muslim groups commit terror attacks, despite the fact that they were not elected by Muslims, nor have any claim to representation of them.

As Muslims, we are commanded not to repel evil with evil, not to use forbidden actions, even when fighting barbarians. Muslims have a right to condemn Terrorism, and do so – but our condemnation will not stop at only the barbaric groups which retaliate using horrific and unjust methods against the perceived aggression – our condemnation reaches to the aggressors themselves too, which began the cycle of barbarism and gave rise, by their example and actions, to the barbarians they hypocritically morally disdain.

However, the Kenyan government, the Ethiopian government, and the US government DO NOT HAVE A RIGHT to demand anything from Muslims, whether it be an apology or a condemnation. The Muslim Ummah is not responsible for what any individuals members criminally do under their own Will (same as a society is not responsible for criminals). The Muslim Ummah has no representative government, and we have been denied such by USA interventions and CIA coups. If the Muslims had an Islamic state that represented the interests of Islam and Muslims, then this state would be able to handle the situation, and Muslims wouldn’t feel the need to become international vigilantes.

The killing of civilians in the Kenyan Mall was fundamentally wrong, regardless of the circumstances – Islam condemns the killing of civilians – but what is equally fundamentally wrong is the on-going invasion and murder of Somalis at the hands of the Kenyan, Ethiopian and U.S. forces.

An article written in 2011, explains how the Kenyan government was involved in the previous war efforts against shabaab, prior to their invasion of somalia.

Although I disagree with Jeremy Scahill’s description (in the video below) of the Islamic Courts Union’s application of Islamic law as ‘brutal’, his research about recent Somali history is accurate and chillingly true.