"However much apologists for the Empire promoted this fiction, the entire enterprise was, in reality, a mask designed to justify the crude plunder of the world's riches and the enslavement of its peoples. And, when their subjects rebelled, callous neglect or horrific violence followed. The histories of the Irish, the Africans, the Arabs, and the South Asians are replete with tales of massacres, imposed famine, denial of freedom, mass imprisonment and torture. Thus the very rights the British claimed for themselves were denied to those whom they saw as less deserving.
This is not mere ancient history. It is playing out today, and not just in the consequences of British (or French, or German, or American) imperial misadventures. It informs our Western portrayal of the "East" and our understanding of its peoples. We still see ourselves as the civilized world, the bearers of universal values. And we still portray the "East" as less civilized, more prone to violence, less respectful of human life and liberty.
No doubt, the brutality of Syria's long and ugly war, the horrors of the so-called "Islamic State", the grotesque sectarian violence in Pakistan, Nigeria and Burma, and terror of Hamas help to fuel these caricatures. But before we make judgments about "the uncivilized East", we need to recall the hundreds of millions killed by the "civilized West" during the last century in Europe and in the rebellious colonies, and the hundreds of thousands killed in the past decade in Iraq. "
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-zogby/shedding-imperial-conceit_b_7674316.html
Me victim!
Er. Islamists are killing Nigerians, Indians, Philippinos, Chinese, Japanese, Australians (majority white former colonial subjects), Kenyans etc etc etc. As well as people who believe in a different form of Islam.
It is not a caricature to note the appalling and unique brutality of Islamist terrorism. It is simple reality.
There's a universal problem with Islamic jihad. It affects EVERYONE who doesn't believe in Islam. Not just nineteenth or twenty first century empires.
It isn't about a person's cause du jour. Imperialism didn't create ISIS or Al Qaeda or Boko Haram. Moslems did. It is not a problem of "the East". It is a problem of the religion.
Let's deal with it rather than try to divert attention using some guilt-attempting comparison. It isn't our fault that wherever there is Islam, there is also inhumane violence.
I am generally liberal, but I am a muscular liberal, not a weak-kneed weed willing to be humbled for believing in the virtues of the modern secular model of government. What anyone's ancestors did is history. We live today and are responsible for our own behaviour. It is the Islamic model of a religious state which needs to be consigned to history. Moslems own this issue. No excuses, or cop-outs, or blame-games.
If it offends Moslems to hear this, too bad. Being offended doesn't mean Islam hasn't got a problem it needs to solve. Rather truth than violence. Rather honest conversation than bombs.
| 