The Ugly Truth about Muslim Grievances How do you define “grievance”? December 12, 2016 Raymond Ibrahim
Do you know the difference between a supremacist grievance and an egalitarian grievance? This is the key to understanding the widely held claim that Muslim grievances are the source of Muslim violence.
Take the latest Muslim attack on U.S. soil. Last week, Abdul Razak Ali Artan -- an 18-year-old Muslim refugee from Somalia, who was receiving aid from Catholic charities -- rammed his car into a building at Ohio State University. He then got out and stabbed people with a butcher knife. He was eventually shot and killed by a guard; 13 people were hospitalized.
Why did he do it?
According to the “experts,” Artan -- like so many other violent Muslim refugees before him -- had grievances. CNN, NBC, the Washington Post, and many others cited a Facebook post by Artan: "I am sick and tired of seeing my fellow Muslim Brothers and Sisters being killed and tortured EVERYWHERE."
Yet despite this claim of ubiquity, he only cited one nation: "Seeing my fellow Muslims being tortured, raped and killed in Burma led to a boiling point. I can’t take it anymore."
The question before us is simple: Was Artan provoked to go on a murderous rampage in America because of grievances concerning the treatment of Muslims in Burma?
For about a decade now, I’ve argued that the “Muslim grievance” narrative is a myth meant to shield Islamic teachings from scrutiny. Its logic goes like this: if Islam is a religion of peace yet Muslims everywhere are behaving violently, then the explanation we must all cling to is that they are really, really "pissed off" about something being done to them.
Most recently in a message to the West, the Islamic State, instead of disseminating and taking advantage of the “grievance” claim, could not have been clearer: no matter what the West does, the true reason ISIS hates and terrorizes it is because we are infidels.
That said, millions of Muslims -- including Artan -- do harbor strong grievances against the West and others. The problem is that they define “grievance” in a manner incompatible with liberty.
This is not the sort of grievance that animates many Muslims – and certainly not those who resort to terrorism.
In short, anytime non-Muslims dare to overstep their Sharia-designated “inferior” status, supremacist Muslims become violently aggrieved
Rather, they are animated by a supremacist-based grievance: they get angry seeing infidels on an equal footing with Muslims. And they get murderous seeing infidels actually lording over Muslims.
Islamic doctrine, which persuades Muslims into believing they are superior to non-Muslims -- who are even likened to dogs and cattle -- imbues Muslims with this sense of entitlement.
n other words, the next time you hear that Muslim rage and terrorism are products of grievances -- from cartoons to territorial disputes to the treatment of Muslims in distant nations -- remember that this is absolutely true. But these “grievances” are not predicated on any rational standards of equality or justice, but on a supremacist worldview.