ISLAMIC APOLOGISTS

Victor David Hanson challenges the idea that terrorism is non-Islamic and that any violence is just the result of a minority of fanatics.

While Ramadan and other apologists can pontificate all they want about “true” Islam, the fact remains: There are countless and nameless others who are so convinced that Islam extols not just terrorism (see Koran 8:12 or 8:57 for an idea of where they get this notion), but suicide-attacks — that is, “martyrdom-operations,” which radicals believe lead directly to paradise — that without a second thought they happily sacrifice their own lives. Surely if they believed that their actions were, as Ramadan vociferously maintains, “anti-Islamic” sins that lead directly to hell, they would not be committing them in the first place — and all while screaming “Allah is great.”

Moreover, if terrorism and suicide bombings have no connection to Islam per se and are instead byproducts of frustration and political oppression, or, as Ramadan asserts, “European colonialism,” why are we not seeing suicide bombers in other dictatorial, oppressive, and impoverished regions of the world, many of which were also colonized by Europe? Despite the fact that the Islamic world has the lion’s share of dramatic news headlines here in the West, it is not the only region in the world suffering, both from internal and external causes.

For instance, even though practically all of sub-Saharan Africa had been colonized by Europe and is currently riddled with political corruption and oppression, when it comes to political violence and terrorism, no other sub-Saharan nation can come anywhere near to Somalia — which also happens to be the only sub-Saharan country that a) is entirely Muslim and b) has experienced a suicide attack, which, admittedly, is a new style of terror for Somalia that was ushered in only with the rise of the Islamist Sharia regime.