July 22, 2005

• So it is was becoming clear that butchery by radical Muslims in Bali,
  Darfur, Iraq, the Philippines Thailand, Turkey, Tunisia, and Iraq was
  not so tied to particular and “understandable” Islamic grievances.

  Perhaps the jihadist killing was not over the West Bank or U.S.
  hegemony after all, but rather symptoms of a global pathology of young
  male Islamic radicals blaming all others for their own self-inflicted
  miseries, convinced that attacks on the infidel would win political
  concessions, restore pride, and prove to Israelis, Europeans, Americans
  — and about everybody else on the globe — that Middle Eastern warriors
  were full of confidence and pride after all.

  Meanwhile an odd thing happened. It turns out that the jihadists were
  cowards and bullies, and thus selective in their targets of hatred. A
  billion Chinese were left alone by radical Islam — even though the
  Chinese were secularists and mostly godless, as well as ruthless to
  their own Uighur Muslim minorities. Had bin Laden issued a fatwa
  against Beijing and slammed an airliner into a skyscraper in Shanghai,
  there is no telling what a nuclear China might have done.

  India too got mostly a pass, other than the occasional murdering by
  Pakistani zealots. Yet India makes no effort to apologize to Muslims.
  When extremists occasionally riot and kill, they usually cease quickly
  before the response of a much more unpredictable angry populace.

  What can we learn from all this?

  
  Read the rest of Victor Hanson's "And Then They Came For Us"

  • 11:36 pm
  • Comments Off