The Cult of the Other

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A member loyal to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) waves an ISIS flag in Raqqa.(Reuters / Stringer)

Americans are outraged in the wake of another indiscriminate mass shooting. The Friday terrorist attacks conducted by members of ISIS, which I will unaffectionately refer to by the Arabic term ‘Daesh’, sent shockwaves across the world as Western nations mourned the loss of over 130 people and condemned the depravity of the attackers. But while the attacks on Paris have already generated immense discourse and empathy almost immediately after their occurrence, Americans all but ignored terrorist attacks in Baghdad and Beirut within a couple days of the attacks on Paris. It is easier for Americans to empathize with French people than with Middle Easterners because we share a similar cultural heritage. This selective empathy defines our societal attitude towards terror and Islam, and highlights our fear of the unfamiliar as well as our contempt for the other.

There is an ethno-cultural gap between America and the Middle East that has only grown wider in the decade and a half since 9/11. In fact, this ‘war on terror’ has little to do with religious ideology at all. This is not the Dark Ages or the Crusades, but religious dogma is still playing the same role in the Christian West’s eternal conflict with the Muslim East in 2015. It is important to remember that religion was used in the West to justify colonialism just as it is used in the Middle East to justify anti-colonialism. We already have a self-proclaimed Caliphate in this struggle, only substitute the crusaders with NATO and Christendom with the ‘Free World’ and you may understand how history can repeat itself.

It is appropriate to express solidarity with the French people in their time of grief. But it is one thing to grieve and another to substitute a moment of consolation with the kairotic moment of a war-mongering political agenda. By lashing out against the Muslim world in the wake of the Paris attacks, Americans are succumbing to the very hate-breeding that Bin Laden predicted would promulgate the growth of radical Islam. The fact is that Daesh does not exist in a vacuum. It is a direct result of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, an invasion that many people still consider to be illegal.

Most, if not all, of the leaders of Daesh are former officers of Saddam Hussein’s military brass. The war between the Sunni minority and the US-approved Shiite government under Nour al-Maliki allowed for a new generation of disenfranchised Sunni youth to mature in a war-torn nation that seemingly had no use for them. Ashamed of their heritage, despising the US and Shiite soldiers who killed their fathers and uncles, many turned to Daesh as a means of escape and a way to reclaim the ‘dignity’ they felt had been stripped from them. This is not to say the actions of Daesh are justified, but it is to say that without the United States pulling the puppet strings in Iraq, they may never have existed in the first place.

The United States dominates the post-colonial world. While globe-spanning European empires no longer lord over their ‘uncivilized’ colonial possessions directly, we still can see vestiges of that bygone era in how we as a society react to terror. Post-colonialism means Americans care more for French lives than we do for Syrian lives. Or Iraqi lives. Nigerian, Kenyan, or Somali lives. Terror has nothing to do with Islam, but it has everything to do with colonialism. Acts of barbarism are simultaneously praised and condemned depending on who is the recipient. And in a post-colonial world, the tired old ‘us vs. them’ mantra is still being slung back and forth between the haves and the have-nots.