TEL AVIV – A Saudi journalist wrote that Muslims and Arabs should spend less time condemning Donald Trump’s proposal for banning Muslims from entering the U.S. and more time apologizing to the world for the terrorism that is taking place in the name of Islam.
Writing in the Kuwaiti daily Al-Rai, Nadine Al-Budair asks how Muslims would react if western youths acting in the name of Christ blew themselves up in their midst. She also slams Muslim attempts to absolve themselves of guilt by saying that terrorists do not represent Islam, calling such disclaimers “pathetic.”
Taking the largest acts of terror from the last couple of decades, Al-Budair, who today lives in Qatar, wonders what would have happened if they had been perpetrated in the Arab world. Citing terrorist groups like the Islamic states desire to impose 7th century Sharia law, Al-Budair writes,
Imagine a Western youth coming here and carrying out a suicide mission in one of our public squares in the name of the Cross. Imagine that two skyscrapers had collapsed in some Arab capital, and that an extremist Christian group, donning millennium-old garb, had emerged to take responsibility for the event, while stressing its determination to revive Christian teachings or some Christian rulings, according to its understanding, to live like in the time [of Jesus] and his disciples, and to implement certain edicts of Christian scholars.
She asks readers to imagine a world in which Christians call Muslims “infidels” and pray that God will eliminate them all. She continues by conjuring an Arab world that grants foreigners visas, citizenship, jobs, free education, and healthcare, and then asks what would happen if one of those foreigners killed Arabs indiscriminately.
Referencing American engineer Paul Marshall Johnson, who was abducted and beheaded by Al-Qaeda operatives in Saudi Arabia in 2004, Al- Budair writes:
“Imagine a Frenchmen or a German in Paris or Berlin leading his Muslim neighbor [somewhere] in order to slaughter him and then freeze his head in an ice box, in a cold and calculating manner … as one terrorist did with the head of an American in Riyadh years ago.”
Asserting that Western attitudes toward Muslims are changing, Al-Budair asks how much longer Muslims will be able to feel safe in Western countries. She says that Western anger toward Muslims is becoming more and more apparent, as demonstrated by “scary declarations” like Donald Trump’s call to bar Muslims from entering the U.S.
Yet the liberal writer condemns Muslims for thinking it is within their rights to condemn Trump’s statement rather than “address the implications of some of our extremist curricula, our education, and our regimes, and [to] be ashamed” of them.
Regarding Trump, she wrote:
“However, how much longer [will this last]? Today things are different. [Western] anger [at Muslims] is apparent, and they make scary declarations. One who recently championed [these views] is Donald Trump, who demanded to bar Muslims from entering the U.S.
“It is strange that we [Muslims] believe we have the right to condemn such statements rather than address the implications of some of our extremist curricula, our education, and our regimes, and be ashamed [of them]… It is strange that we condemn [the West] instead of addressing what is happening in our midst – the extremist ways in which we interpret the shari’a and our reactionary attitudes towards each other and the world. It is strange that we condemn instead of apologizing to the world.”
She takes the Arab and Muslim world to task for continuing to condemn the West instead of addressing its own radicalism, which holds that killing Westerners is part of a holy jihad that “leads to virgins of paradise.”
“It is strange that we condemn instead of apologizing to the world,” Al-Budair writes.
She says that claims made by Muslims that those who commit terrorism do not represent Islam are “farces” and “pathetic” attempts to absolve Muslims of guilt.
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