Muslims Stung by West’s Indifference to Their Losses

[Liberal_in_LA]

PARIS — In recent days, jihadists killed 41 people at Istanbul’s bustling, shiny airport; 22 at a cafe in Bangladesh; and at least 250 celebrating the final days of Ramadan in Baghdad. Then the Islamic State attacked, again, with bombings in three cities in Saudi Arabia.

By Tuesday, Michel Kilo, a Syrian dissident, was leaning wearily over his coffee at a Left Bank cafe, wondering: Where was the global outrage? Where was the outpouring that came after the same terrorist groups unleashed horror in Brussels and here in Paris? In a supposedly globalized world, do nonwhites, non-Christians and non-Westerners count as fully human?

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This is not the first time that the West seems to have shrugged off massacres in predominantly Muslim countries. But the relative indifference after so many deaths caused by the very groups that have plagued the West is more than a matter of hurt feelings.

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There are some understandable reasons for the differing reactions. People typically identify more closely with places and cultures that are familiar to them. With Iraq, there is also a degree of fatigue, and a feeling that a bombing there is less surprising than one in Europe.

Deadly attacks have been a constant in Iraq after years of American occupation, followed by a sectarian war in which Sunni and Shiite militias slaughtered civilians of the opposite sect. Still, while terrorist attacks in Europe may feel more surprising to the West — though they have become all too common there, too — that does not explain the relative indifference to attacks in Istanbul, Saudi Arabia or Bangladesh.


http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/06/world/europe/muslims-baghdad-dhaka-istanbul-terror.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=first-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

[Mika]

1. Mission continues to be accomplished!

[chowder66]

2. I don't understand either.

I don't have a twitter or a Facebook account but I was just as surprised I didn't see articles and postings supporting the people devastated by this. My heart breaks for the hell that they, their friends, their families are going through.

I don't buy the tribal aspect one bit. We are all part of the human tribe and if we can feel pain for others at home or overseas, I think it should include everyone and not stop at borders. There are no borders on twitter or Facebook are there?


On edit: When I say I didn't see articles or postings I mean droves of them about the pouring out of empathy on twitter and Facebook.

[Bluenorthwest]

3. The Saudis literally do not treat people like me as humans, under the law we can be killed like

vermin. So ironic that they use those terms.

[Travis_0004]

4. Its a different culture that we are unfamiliar with

A lot of people have been to Europe or want to go to Eurppe. Less people have been to the middle east.

I bet a lot of people couldnt event point out Istanbul on a map.

I would also argue that mass bombings happen often there and we are desensitized to them.

[JI7]

6. like shootings in the US

[Democat]

15. Even in many Western countries, people don't seem sympathic to US school shootings

They react with "what is wrong with those people?"

[JI7]

5. i think because they see the muslim nations as not doing enough to fight the Terrorists

and in many cases supporting them .

[LiberalLovinLug]

8. this

They fund terrorist groups, even if not officially, they allow a privileged religious elite to fund these groups from within their own borders. Then they only send a minimum military force, when this is happening right in their region. In the case of Saudi Arabia they also practice many of the same barbaric acts like beheading as ISIS does. Same draconian laws against women and non-Muslims.

Of course it is sad when any group of innocent humans gets killed by terrorists. But it just smacks of looking for sympathy when they are hardly helping the fight against extremism themselves.

[ericson00]

16. nail hit on the head

+100

[pediatricmedic]

10. Best explanation so far .nt

[LeftishBrit]

20. That may be true of some of the governments...

but the victims of terror are not the same as the governments.

[mainer]

23. This can't be said loudly enough

I have so many friends in Istanbul - liberal, areligious, well-educated people who are deeply opposed to Erdogan. It's a massive failure of empathy when we can't see the victims as fellow human beings, just like us.

[Violet_Crumble]

24. Plus eleventy billion to what you said n/t

[LeftishBrit]

29. Exactly! Great post!

[Drahthaardogs]

21. i agree

I know a lot of people who feel that there are a lot of Middle East countries and people who will not fight for their own cause.

[Violet_Crumble]

22. You are aware that there's middle eastern countries fighting ISIS, right?

And for the record, the vast majority of people in majority Muslim countries hate ISIS...

[betsuni]

7. The Dhaka attack is still huge news in Japan because of the seven Japanese victims.

I imagine in Italy as well, they had nine. Saw on news last night that some of the terrorists went to top schools, showed one of their bedrooms and on the shelf were (in English) "To Kill a Mockingbird" and "Catcher in the Rye." I was surprised the families talked to the media. I knew there were three American victims, but I had to Google just now to find out who they were. There just didn't seem to be be much about Dhaka in U.S. news after the hostage crises was over.

[Warpy]

9. US news is fucking worthless and always has been

The BBC has run huge stories on the attack in Dhaka as well as on the surprising origin of the terrorists, all but one from ruling class families, well educated, mostly secular.

Friends from outside the country have all been appalled by the lack of international news here.

At least we now have options, including links at the Newseum Gallery of daily front pages to foreign newspapers.

[betsuni]

11. I'm a little embarrassed at how often I read the Daily Mail, but they always have

dozens more photos than any U.S. source, at the very least. The British press is great.

[Warpy]

12. You're right, the Daily Fail often has great photojournalism

and occasionally they even get the story right. Ditto the Torygraph. I won't shoot the messenger over either one.

However, anyone expecting hooplah in the US press over a foreign story is going to be sorely disappointed, the US is astonishingly provincial. It's embarrassing.

[eShirl]

30. a lack of international news here is the norm. n/t

[ronnie624]

13. The West has brought chaos and death to many Muslim countries,

murdering civilians by the hundreds of thousands. It would be logically inconsistent to express concern for them when they are victims of terrorism that results from our interventions.

[Democat]

14. Is there an outpouring of support from the Middle East over each US school shooting?

Do people in Iraq send support for every school shooting in the US?

Should Americans worry about what Iraq thinks of their school shooting or should Iraqis worry about what Americans think of their bombings?

[ck4829]

27. Heck, there isn't an outpouring of support from the US over US school shootings

A school shooting happens and we have a bloc of people who have a first response not of "Oh those poor victims" but "Oh how is the government going to try to grab my guns?"

[ericson00]

17. by allowing their own religion to maintain its political power

in contrast to the non-Muslim world, Muslim societies are seen as having brought this Radical Islamism on itself. Why are such as far smaller percentage of Muslim countries ranked "free" by Freedom House compared to nations with religious majorities of other religions?? Why are the worst ILGA rankings in the world concentrated in the Muslim Greater Middle East? Even for the religious nutties in the West and elsewhere, Pat Robertson doesn't compare anywhere close to Al-Awlaki, Osama, Khaled Mashal, Al-Zawahiri, etc. in terms of global reach and vehemence.

[LeftishBrit]

18. Umm, the countries involved are for the most part not democracies, so that people had little or no

choice about who is allowed to maintain power. Any more than average 17th century English people had with regard to the Divine Right of Kings, or Puritan rule.

And even in Turkey, which is sort-of democratic, people were not voting for ISIS!!!

Please do not blame the victims.

[ericson00]

32. with the internet, the populations of these countries can easily get more than enough information

about what freedom and free societies are.

Even in the absence of democracy, the persistence over time of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes and rules, does render the people responsible at a certain point if they don't rise up or seek to change the worst aspects of them. At least in the USSR and in the Iron Curtain, there were tons of dissidents, far more than than in either many Muslim majority countries, so many that the USSR had to quell several freedom (as in for liberty, not just new leaders) inspired uprisings and build networks of gulags.

Also, doesn't the kind of thinking you posit render Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, etc.'s populations blameless for the ills of their countries?

[LeftishBrit]

33. But not enough power

It took more than 40 years for people to successfully break the Iron Curtain - and it's arguable that it wouldn't have happened even then if the Soviet Union hadn't bankrupted itself through mismanagement and excessive military spending.

'Also, doesn't the kind of thinking you posit render Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, etc.'s populations blameless for the ills of their countries?'

Apples and oranges. Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany - not by an absolute majority, but still elected.

[ericson00]

34. let's see; there was the Polish Gov in Exile, Prague Spring,

Hungarian Revolution attempt of 1956; there were plenty of uprising attempts in the Eastern Bloc. And those were not merely to change the person in power, like the Iranian Revolution; they were actual for liberalization.

Also, in parliamentary systems, its very often a party wins less than a majority of votes (no party in Britain has gotten over 50% of votes in at least 50 years), and also pretty often parties don't win a majority of seats.

[LeftishBrit]

19. The BBC and other British media have given quite a lot of publicity to these atrocities

Maybe not as much as to France or Belgium; but they haven't been ignored altogether here.

Really tragic!

[pampango]

25. It's OTHERS killing OTHERS. We did not care about Rwanda (until it was too late),

Yugoslavia (until it was almost too late) and many, many other historical examples.

The US (valuable and to be protected at all costs) vs THEM (you are on your own, good luck) mentality takes us to places that human beings should not go.

[Travis_0004]

26. Maybe this proves their point a bit

But I didn't even know there were 3 attacks.

I knew there was one. . . .. somewhere. Not sure which one I originally read about.

[BeyondGeography]

28. When Westerners are targeted/killed it's bigger news in the West

E.g. there has been more coverage of the Dhaka attacks because two kids from Emory were killed and the target itself was a hangout for expats. When Muslims kill Muslims, I hope it's bigger news over there because it will help people come to grips with the insanity of indiscriminate killing, just as our own mass murders are a bigger story here.

[DetlefK]

31. Two reasons:

1. The people and the media are over-saturated with news of bombings in muslim countries. There are only so many fucks one can give.

"Hey, China is surpressing its citizens and jailing people for demanding civil rights!" - "Yeah, what else is new."
"Hey, thousands of people die from gun-accidents because any idiot is allowed to own one!" - "Yeah, so what?"
"Hey, thousands of African-Americans are possibly having their lives ruined with social policies that give them disdvantages in life!" - "And?"
"Hey, Trump said something horribly ignorant, racist and sexist that disqualifies from being President!" - "This is old news."
"Hey, yet another bombing!" - "Wait, you mean the one yesterday or the one the day before yesterday?"

Me personally, I have neither the time nor the energy to be outraged 24/7.






2. Bad news from muslim countries is no news. It's the new normal.

Even if you have the time and energy to be outraged at something, why outrage at all for things that are normal?

[Blue_Tires]

35. Because those four governments

have been complicit in differing degrees in actively fostering the terror which lost the plot and bit them instead...

Besides, since when have those countries really given a shit about what the Western world thinks?