Why do they Hate us (and Want to Kill us)?

This was a question posed to me the other night at a family gathering by a non-Muslim assuming that I, as a Muslim had some special insight into the minds of an irrational, vicious cult. To answer that question we first needs to understand who “they” are. Unfortunately the Right Wing media, wanting to stoke Islamophobia and fear to gain a political advantage, paints the “they” with a very broad stroke as Muslims. (I read the reporting on the recent Bangladesh massacre in the New York Times, PBS, BBC, Aljizeera and Fox. It’s interesting that Fox was the only one leading off with an Islamophobic “dog whistle” in the first sentence reporting that the terrorists were heard saying Allah Whakbar, which translated means God is Great, equivalent to something like “praise the Lord”). The Right even insist that the President call terrorism “Islmaic”. In analyzing who the “they” are lets first look at Christianity which most of us are more familiar with. Christianity, though consisting of many groups (Manicheans, Copts) can be divided into the two major groups, the Catholics and Protestants. The Protestants in turn have many sub groups such as Lutheran, Presbyterian, Unitarian, Methodist, Baptist, etc. Among the Baptists are the Southern Baptists and the extremely homophobic and Islamophobic Westboro Baptists, a radical sect, and various Evangelical splinter groups (though I’m not sure all Evangelicals are Baptists). When the Westboro Baptists Church pickets the burial of a gay soldier killed in War, we don’t think, or the media reports it, as a Baptist, Protestant nor Christian act. We attribute the action rightly to the Westboro Baptists. Now the non-Muslim members of the family gathering would say “but they don’t kill people”. OK, let’s look at another case. Many of the Fundamentalist Protestant, especially those believing in “Armageddon” in their life time, are Zionist and supporters of the Israeli Right and the occupation of Palestine. The Bible is their justification, seeing that these lands were given to the Israelites by God. (In fact I would venture to bet that a larger percentage of Evangelical Fundamentalists are Zionists then are American or Israeli Jews.) When Israel attacks Gaza or Israeli terrorists kill Palestinians (In the last ten years there have been 129 Israeli children killed by Palestinians and more than 1,500 Palestinian children killed by Israelis), we don’t say that Christians are Zionists and support the oppressive, and illegal occupation of the West Bank and through this support are in part responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians and the displacement of millions. If we said it at all, we would rightly say that some Evangelicals are supportive of Israeli aggression. And we don’t expect people to explain this action as Christians but as human beings. (I believe it is the Methodist Church that is divesting itself of investments in companies whose products are used to uphold the occupation of the West Bank. We don’t say that Protestants or Christians are divesting their holdings, but the Methodist Church.) Let me start by admitting that I know very little about Islam and having lived all my life in predominantly Christian areas, know more about Christianity. Now getting to Muslim’s responsibility for terrorism, as with Christianity, Islam also consists of many groups and sects. The major division is between the Sunni, by far the majority, and the Shia. The Sunni are more like the Protestants in that they believe there is no intermediary between them and God, whereas the Shia have the Ayatollahs and the Catholics the Popes as intermediaries. One of the factions, the Wahhabis, a small minority of Sunnis, though the state religion in Saudi Arabia, has the most fundamental interpretation of the Quran. The Salafis, a violent subset of the Wahhabis which I believe came into being with the start of European colonialism, took an even more of a fundamentalist interpretation and used religion to justify violence. The Muslim Brotherhood split from the Salafis and became more political and less violent though still fundamentalist. The Islamic State of Syria (ISIS) follows the Salafi interpretation of the Quran and since that is not the interpretation of the Shia nor the vast majority of Sunni Muslims throughout the world, it is totally inappropriate to expect non-Salafi Muslims to explain or feel guilty for their actions no more than it is for Baptists, never mind Christians as a whole, to explain the actions of the Westboro Baptist Church or the Zionism of some fundamentalists.