Is it Muslim Rage or its Causes that Threatens Us?

The debate over how to handle Islamic terrorism essentially comes down to those who advocate managing Islam in order to control its propensity for violence, and those who believe that instead we should be managing anything and everything that might provoke Muslim rage.

While controlling violence by managing Islam is the logical and direct approach, the weight of the establishment in numerous countries has come down on the side of suppressing all things that might provoke Muslim rage. This disturbing position expresses itself in numerous ways, whether it was the censorship of the Mohammed cartoons, the ongoing attempt to blame Israel for attacks on US troops, or the entire grand theory of the left which blames all Muslim violence on the domestic and foreign policies of their targets.

Given the choice between blaming the criminal for his crimes, or his victims for having provoked him-- the political and cultural elites of the very countries targeted for terror have chosen to turn the blame inward. They have placed their sordid faith in the belief that the best way to manage Islamic rage, is by relentlessly appeasing and avoiding any provocations that might cause it to flare up.

This phenomenon is often seen in abuse victims who have to cope with their abuser's enraged violence. By accepting responsibility for being the cause of his anger, they make it seem controllable and predictable. Their coping mechanism is to blame themselves, rather than face the real problem, which is that they live together with a violent and dangerous individual, who will sooner or later kill them. This is the relationship between the West and Islam.

The victim accepts the abuser's narrative that he is a good and decent person, unless provoked. So too the civilized world accepts Islam's narrative that it is the Religion of Peace, and that it is peaceful, unless it is provoked. By accepting the enemy's narrative, the victim accepts the blame for his blows and assaults, and comes to feel that controlling the abuser's rage is their duty. So too the civilized world accepts that Islamic terrorism is its fault, and that it must "behave better" in order to avoid future blowups. Meanwhile the smallest requests of the Muslim world that it behave better are met with outrage and anger, much as the abuser explodes into a rage at any insinuation that he has an anger management problem.

By identifying with the abuser, victims take on a peculiar form of empowerment. By joining in their own abuse, they become the abuser, winning victories over their own helplessness. The growing identification by the West with Muslims can be viewed in that light. Today the civilized world is abusing itself, and after every lesson, it opens the door to usher in more Muslims to violate its cities, murder its citizens and work toward their Endlosung, their Final Solution for the free world, whether it is Al-Andalus, Eurabia, Palestine, Amerabia-- it is still death by any name.

But one of the ugliest expressions of his mindset is when the abuser enlists the victim in finding him more victims to abuse. This occurs when abuse victims help abuse their own children or lure in other women to be abused. At this point the identification of the victim with the abuser is so total, that they begin to take an active joy in his crimes. What else can one make of the relish and hate with which so many Europeans pursued Yugoslavia and now pursue Israel. While Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan openly threatens the ethnic cleansing of Christians if they don't cease complaining about Armenian genocide, Europe howls outraged over Israel. And its own cities burn and its own citizens die at the very hands of the people they are so eager to fight beside.

This is what happens when rather than dealing with the rage, you instead try to dampen the causes of the rage. The problem of Islamic rage is not caused by foreign policy or global warming or the rain in Al-Andalus. It is caused by the Muslim belief that they have both the right and the power to express their anger through violence. It may not be possible to do anything about their sense of right, because it is not up to us to reform the morality or the morally retarded. But we can do something about that sense of power. And we can begin by refusing to tolerate their anger.

When cartoons which suggest that Islam is a violent religion are censored because Muslims might react with violence, the serpent has officially swallowed its own tail. The very idea that we must censor any suggestions that Muslims are violent for fear that they might kill us, adequately telegraphs the mental paradoxes and hypocrisies required to enact such a policy. It is not driven by sensitivity or open-mindedness, but by a cloak of self-deception thrown over naked fear.

Meanwhile the same US military brass which covered up Nidal Malik Hasan's violent Islamism, both before and after his attack, is sending signals that the real threat to the lives of US soldiers is Israeli housing. In fact of course Israeli houses have not killed anyone. Houses rarely do unless they fall on a wicked witch in the fabled land of Oz. It is killers, not houses, that kill. Hasan was an enemy from within. One of those friendly Religion of Peace types whose poor sensitive feelings every level of government has spent so much time nurturing. Yet none of it prevented him opening fire on the unarmed soldiers he was supposed to care for. Instead all the years of tolerating his growing homicidal rage sent him the signal that his anger was justified and that he could act with impunity.

What truly endangers the lives of US soldiers and civilians is the extraordinary tolerance provided to Islam, the willingness of our leaders to minimize and even justify their anger as legitimate. Which nurtures their anger and takes them down the path to seeing it through, as they see even their enemies confess and act guilty before them. And that seals their fate.

Every excuse made for Islamic terrorism, ends up causing exactly that which it claims to want to prevent. And yet the modern cottage industry of the media and academic world in numerous countries is justifying Islamic terrorism, penning books and articles that defend those explosions of violent rage. Always willing to help the abuser find new victims.

The left believed that criminals were simply the product of social conditions that forced them to express their anger and helplessness through crime. And so the left coddled criminals, and crime spiraled out of control. A new generation of politicians bolstered by outraged voters helped shut down these experiments in reform in the United States. But when the criminals were being coddled, the entire society found itself in prison because of them. So too today when Islam is coddled, everyone who lives side by side with them finds themselves in prison.

It is important to remember this essential split, between those who favor managing Islamic anger and those who favor managing anything that might provoke that anger. It is the great debate of our time, between the courageous and the cowards, between the warriors and the appeasers, between the defenders and the victim/abusers. Only by confronting Islamic anger, can we put a stop to it. And for as long as we try to control its causes, censoring ourselves, burning our own books and sacrificing new victims to its insatiable hate, that rage will grow until it consumes us all.