The West has committed many sins against the Muslim world, making moral pronouncements from Washington, London or Paris ring hollow, but more and more Muslims are recognizing that the violent nihilism of jihadi terror is morally reprehensible and must be stopped, says ex-CIA official Graham E. Fuller.
By Graham E. Fuller
It is hard to find even the smallest silver lining in the ongoing series of jihadist outrages that now proliferate with each daily news report. The immoral and cynical exploitation of religion (a constant of human history) is ultimately about power and intimidation. The phenomenon shows no signs of coming to an end and at this point in history happens to most dramatically center in the Muslim world.
We now have the murder of the Istanbul tourists, and Pakistan’s two terrible recent attacks on educational institutions as merely the latest. Boko Haram in Nigeria may even lead the pack in wanton killings by zombie packs.
The second plane about to crash into the World Trade Center towers in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001.
Political violence has always existed. But what are its “natural limits?” We know about the negative legacies of colonialism and the impact of countless Western invasions and wars and the struggle to control developing world energy resources. We know about U.S. wars that have killed over a million Muslims over the past decade.
We understand that the sources of political, economic and social desperation and rage still exist. We understand the suffering of Palestinians – over half a century now – under harsh and unyielding Israeli occupation. We understand resistance by any peoples – in any country – to foreign invasion and occupation.
But not even the most militant political vision can justify the wanton killing of civilians simply for the sake of spectacle and show of power. Most moral ideas almost anywhere, religious or non-religious, can be pushed to levels of blind fanaticism that discredit the original moral concept. Islam, Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, yes, all do it.
And take socialism – the vision of an economically just society. In the Soviet Union under Stalin and in China under Mao abstract socialist…