Hamid Dabashi on All the Terrible Things Being Done to Muslims (Part Five)

Again Dabashi is blaming the Infidels — “the US and Europe” — for the proxy war in Yemen between two Muslim states, Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shi’a Iran. We have supplied weapons to the Saudis, but have done nothing to encourage them to continue the conflict, have repeatedly urged them not to attack civilian targets, and right now are in the process of ending all military support for the Saudis in Yemen because of the Khashoggi murder. Neither the US nor Europe are responsible for the internecine warfare between Muslims, nor for the willingness with which both sides attack civilian targets. It is those “Arabs who are pulling the triggers and dropping the bombs” who are solely responsible. Are the US, Israel, and multiple Arab states “equally guilty” — with the Syrians and their Russian and Iranian backers — of the mayhem in Syria? How is the US guilty? It has only a few thousand troops in Syria, and their target has always been ISIS. Does Hamid Dabashi think it would be better for all concerned if the US did not conduct its war on ISIS? Shouldn’t he approve of what the Americans have been doing? They have also helped, in a smaller way, the secular opposition to Assad. Isn’t this what Dabashi would want us to do? Or would he prefer that such forces be crushed by Bashar Assad and his Iranian and Russian friends? As for Israel being “equally guilty of the mayhem” in Syria, Israel has tried to stay well out of the conflict. It has only become involved tangentially, when it detects Iranian attempts to send advanced weaponry to Hezbollah in Lebanon, or tries to set up Iranian bases in Syria. Only then, only for the limited purposes of halting those weapons deliveries and preventing those Iranian bases from being built, does Israel bomb those weapons convoys and those incipient bases. It does not take sides in the Syrian civil war. On the ground, it does do one important thing: it offers medical care, for free, to wounded Syrians, both soldiers and civilians, whatever side they are on. Does Hamid Dabashi disapprove of this samaritan undertaking? And how does Israel’s selfless care for wounded Syrians fit with his belief that Israel commits what he calls “incremental genocide” in Palestine?

There is more of Dabashi’s rant about the worldwide assault on Muslims, about their ethnic cleansing, about the massacres of innocent Muslims, and the “genocide” waged against them, in his article. But I think you’ve had to endure quite enough of his nonsense. It’s all in the same wildly exaggerated and deeply dishonest vein. Meanwhile, outside of Dabashi’s fantasy world, Muslims are on the march. There are the Islamic terrorist groups: Islamic State, Al Qaeda, Boko Haram, Hezbollah, Hamas, Al Shebaab, Jabhat Al-Nusra, Abu Sayyaf, Islamic Jihad, and others whose names we do not know. All of them are still intact. Al Qaeda has taken a hit in Afghanistan, but branches have appeared in Yemen and the Sinai and Syria and Libya. Similarly, the Islamic State has been defeated, for now, in Syria and Iraq, but it has branches in Libya, Yemen, the Sinai, the Philippines, and Afghanistan. According to the Rand Corporation, there are an estimated 230,000 Salafist Jihadi fighters in these groups, four times as many as there were in 2001.

There are tens of millions of Muslims now living in Europe, deep behind what they are taught to regard as enemy lines, and 5.2 million more in the U.S., Canada, and Australia. They are conducting what Robert Spencer first called the Stealth Jihad, not open warfare, but a slow undermining of the West, in order to gradually impose the Sharia, or holy law of Islam. Muslims are not facing “genocide” or “concentration camps,” not enduring “massacres,” nor being “mowed down on a daily basis.” They are doing quite well, thank you, though Hamid Dabashi wants you to see them as the innocent victims of unrelenting Unbelievers. His side — Islam — is doing just fine. We’re the ones who need to worry.