Hypocrisy Writ Large

Do Muslims have standing to criticize the legacy of Western colonialism? Throughout the Western world, there has been a sustained critique of the fact and the effects of European global dominance beginning in the 16^th century. It is anachronistic and somewhat unfair to judge 16^th-century Spanish explorers and colonizers by modern Western mores just because they were white people who therefore should have known better than to have conquered the Incas and Aztecs. But that negative judgment, even if marginally unfair, is a natural reflection and affirmation of the living Western commitment to self-determination, respect, pluralism and universal democratic rule. It is a tribute to the vitality of our principles that there is such a discussion (even if also cynically misused by Marxists as an attack on that heritage).

Islam has no such values, nor political traditions; nor is there a current comparable discussion in the Islamic world about the historical crimes done by Islamic armies and empires. Europeans sent twelve million Africans to the New World in chains. No one in the West says that was rightful or praiseworthy. Islam also enslaved millions of Africans as well as fourteen million Europeans. Cultures, religious traditions, and languages were exterminated. Muslim academics and opinion leaders are not gathering to express regrets for any of that.

Politically correct academics in the West always claim in kneejerk unison that historically, conversions to Islam were mostly voluntary, a claim that would be more convincing if conversions did not follow military conquest, mass enslavement, beheadings and the subsequent imposition of dhimmi status on the conquered as well as the destruction of churches and synagogues.

It is frustratingly silly to see young women in Islamic garb on campus making speeches about the evils of the Western world when being a woman openly criticizing the host country's culture and history would result in harsh punishments in much of the Islamic world. The very fact of so many Islamic immigrants to the West is an irrefutable statement of the superiority of Western values and society. Americans, Canadians, Europeans, Australians, New Zealanders, and Japanese non-Muslims are not crowding the borders of the Islamic world, begging for entry. To pretend that any Muslim making use of American rights and privileges is in any way a victim is so hypocritical as to almost be an affront.

And Islam shows no indication of necessary introspection and reform. It has never exhibited the capability to extract adaptable first principles rather than sustained adherence to rather arbitrary literal dictates. Westerners used to religious pluralism don’t seem to get that Islam is not merely a spiritual, moral or theological disposition but very much a political and social program entirely hostile to every value and tradition that went into the founding documents of the USA.

If and when Muslims condemn the persecution of Christians across Africa and elsewhere (none of whom ever perpetrated an October 7) at the hands of Muslims in the context of Islam’s wrongful violent past, they can join the discussion of past Western offenses, which discussion must also also acknowledge the principled reasons why the American-led West ceased to operate any colonial enterprise. Principled reasons still absent in the Islamic world.