Boreal

Accomplices

A civilization that feels guilty for everything it is and does will lack the energy and conviction to defend itself.

Jean-François Revel

If religious fanatics are shredding, burning and crushing women and children to death we are partly to blame according to former Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) agent Michel Juneau-Katsuya in an interview with Guy A. Lepage.

Something to do with our attempting to impose our Western values on the Muslim world according to the host of Tout le monde en parle (Everyone's talking about it, my translation) the most watched variety and current affairs program in Québec.

The following is my translation of the pertinent portion of the interview:

Katsuya: ... to what is due the rise of radicalism …

Lepage (interrupts): It’s the objection to Westernization.

Katsuya: Exactly! It’s a test of strength to try to balance out something else. If we take the time to understand how we behaved, what we did, how we did it, then we may see that somewhere um ... um ... we share part of the blame.

Lepage: You are staying with us?

APPLAUSE

Wonder what share of the blame Katsuya would assign to that eight year old boy and those two young women who died in a shower of nails from a bomb blast? What values did they try to impose on the Tsarnaev brothers to deserve to die like that.

What horrendous values do women such as the following promote that they deserved to be shot?

Seven charity workers, six of them women, shot dead in north-west Pakistan

BBC January 1. 2013

Five women immunizing children against polio shot dead in Pakistan

Globe and Mail, December 18, 2012

Do Christians deserve having grenades lobbed at them inside churches in Nigeria simply because inside they worship a son whose paternity Allah vehemently denies?

12 killed in attacks on two churches in Nigeria. They were the latest strikes against Christians in the region ... More than 30 people died in a wave of Christmas Day attacks in the north last year, blamed on Boko Haram*. CNN, December 26, 2012

What about Sufis and their family blown to bits for worshipping Allah through song and dance or young people in love shot for wanting to be together?

Taliban suicide bombers kill 42 (Sufis) at Pakistan shrine

AP, April 3, 2010 AP

Afghan Taliban Execute Couple For Eloping

CBS News, April 14, 2009

It's not your fault! Do not accept even an ounce of blame for what ruthless zealots do. By doing so, to paraphrase former jihadist Hassan Butt, you become an accomplice.

When I was still a member of what is probably best termed the British Jihadi Network, a series of semi-autonomous British Muslim terrorist groups linked by a single ideology, I remember how we used to laugh in celebration whenever people on TV proclaimed that the sole cause for Islamic acts of terror like 9/11, the Madrid bombings and 7/7 was Western foreign policy.

By blaming the government for our actions ... [they] did our propaganda work for us. More important, they also helped to draw away any critical examination from the real engine of our violence: Islamic theology.

My plea to fellow Muslims, Hassan Butt, The Observer, July 1, 2007

Bernard Payeur