On Wednesday 24, the President of the USA, Obama, called "for the world -- especially Muslim communities -- to explicitly,
forcefully, and consistently reject the ideology of organizations like
al Qaeda and ISIL". So on the one hand he says the USA is not waging war against Muslims, but on the other Muslims are the ones 'specially' responsible. One would have thought that so many people, 'specially' Muslims, are being killed by Al Qaeda and ISIL because they explicitly, forcefully consistently reject their ideology!! He then goes on to mention some initiatives by Muslims that are denouncing ISIL like "the young British Muslims who responded to terrorist propaganda by starting the “NotInMyName” campaign". Wait a second! I think I saw that somewhere before! Did he mean the Not In My Name slogan by the Stop the War Coalition? (granted he also spoke out against that war back then), or the Not In My Name Jewish group in Chicago (his Senate seat was from Illinois) seeking a just peace between Israelis and Palestinians? (interestingly the website is inactive since 2006, did they give up?).
Four days later, Obama gave another speech where he said: "...our work is not done when too many children live in crumbling
neighborhoods, cycling through substandard schools, traumatized by daily
violence...we need to help communities and law enforcement build trust, build
understanding, so that our neighborhoods stay safe and our young people
stay on track.... we need to address the unique challenges that make it hard for some of our young people to thrive". He was not talking about young unemployed Muslims, budding Islamic terrorists or jihadist sympathizers... he was talking to the Congresional Black Caucus about racial discrimination.
The selective use of collective responsibility does a disservice for millions of Muslims that don't condone Al Qaeda or ISIL, and dismisses societal dynamics at play in many of these countries.
I am not saying that religion does not play a role in how societal forces interact (to the contrary, for example Catholicism is seen as a reactionary movement by many Europeans, and Buddhist monks have been inciting to violence in Burma), but rather that there are many other variables that are as relevant or more to understanding conflict and violence: resource allocation and access, governance, discrimination, status, injustice, etc... As Blair's (it is a good quote to reconnect with the Not In My Name Iraq theme!) New Labour 97 Manifesto famous slogan "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime" insisted on "individual responsibility for crime" and attacking "the causes of crime by
...our measures to relieve social deprivation"; Obama has reversed (paraphreversed?) it into a Muslim collective responsibility for terrorism and also a cause of it.
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