When one crazed or ideologically obsessed gunman starts shooting in Arizona, people condemn him and start bemoaning their society. How about a place with ten million people like that who are treated as heroes?...
Let’s say that the proportion of lies, slanders, and incitement in the American discourse is one-tenth of one percent of all the words spoken on controversial issues. The equivalent figure for the Middle East is well over 95 percent.
In addition to that tone, there is not only a total lack of balance but an absence of the other side altogether.
And in addition to those two points, the level of factual accuracy has a huge gap separating it from reality. (Though, admittedly, that gap has been narrowing in recent years as Western standards decline).
And in addition to those three points, while extremists tend to be marginal in the United States, they are in control--either politically or at least rhetorically--throughout most of the Arabic-speaking and Muslim-majority worlds….
Now, let me ask some questions:
--If America is horrified in claiming that a tiny amount of mostly marginal extremism inspires one mad man to murder six people and try to kill a politician, how much violence can be traced to hundreds of thousands of mosques, media, teachers, and mainstream politicians daily preaching hatred literally millions of times a day?
--If the discourse throughout the Arabic-speaking world, Iran, increasingly in Turkey, and generally in Muslim-majority countries is almost 100 percent incitement, how can there be partners for peace or a hope of stability? What good do concessions do when the next day the culture of incitement and hatred goes on at full speed?
--If the degree of anti-Western, anti-American, anti-Jewish, and anti-Christian incitement is 100,000 times more intense and mainstream than any “Islamophobic” discourse in the West, while mitigating discourse—i.e., empathy, positive images, etc., toward “the other”—is one thousandth of a percent less, then which of these phenomenon is a greater threat and problem?
