The West is not at War with Islam

NYC had 911, London the July 7th tube attack, Madrid the Atocha train bombs that left over 200 dead and 1000 injured, Boston the marathon bombers, and now Paris had the Charlie Hebdo-Jewish supermarket massacre. All horrible attaks. But each time these bombings and shootings take place commentators argue that this is the beginning of a war between Islam and the West. Over years they have predicted many more innocent victims dying in the hands of Islamist extremists. But much to their surprise, in each of these cases, the murderers were uniquely sick individuals not representative of the 1.5 billion other Muslims and more attacks did not materialize in each city.

The lack of other attacks has shown that the vast majority of Muslims who live in Europe and USA are not willing to join the ranks of the murderers and are as disgusted as non Muslims. They feel towards extremists as we feel towards the Norwegian attacker or the Newtown killer. Does the Muslim religion currently produce more people willing to kill in the name of Islam? I think this is undeniable. But to be fair the West produces a lot of people who are willing to unfairly kill and torture in the name of “freedom” in places as Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo. And if we simply count victims, Muslim victims outnumber non Muslim victims at over 100 to 1. The victims of Islamic terrorism in the Muslim world, are mostly other Muslims.