Making believers out of non-believers

Brave New World (The Star)
30 March 2016

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IF I were a member of Islamic State (IS), I would say a prayer of thanks to God for providing the planet Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. One of these two men could possibly become the next President of the United States and they are probably the best recruiters for IS and other extremist organisations of its ilk.

Their racist rhetoric is just the ticket to make believers out of non-believers. If IS says that the West is the enemy of Islam, both Trump and Cruz prove them right.
After all, Trump is the one who wants to bar all Muslims from entering the United States (as though every single Muslim were a suicide bomber); and Cruz wants bans on the building of mosques and armed patrols in Muslim neighbourhoods across America.
And as much as Trump gets most of the headlines (how can such a grotesque creature not get the headlines?) it would be wise to note that Cruz surrounds himself with the vilest of racists. It’s just that he doesn’t have the hideous hair and twisted petulant mouth of Trump so his dangerousness slips under the radar.

Take for example one of Cruz’s Presidential campaign team: Clare Lopez. Lopez was reported to have said, “When people in bona fide religions follow their doctrines they become better people – but it’s Hindus, Christians and Jews. When Muslims follow their doctrine they become terrorists.”
Man, how racist and ignorant is that? And a potential President of the United States has this person on his team?
Now, what if one of these two get elected? Then IS would rejoice. The leader of America would be a genuine enemy of Muslims and this could only attract the misguided into the arms of IS, based on the simple fact that they appear to be correct. The West hate us, they would say, and for proof look who was just made US president.
Ironic, then, that both Cruz and Trump, for all their rah rah rhetoric about national security and being hard on terrorists, are in fact doing the exact thing that IS and their ilk want them to do. Either these two men are beyond idiotic or really, they are working hand in hand with the extremists because they sure can be great recruiters.
However, it is not just America which is playing into the hands of these monsters. Europe, too, has done its bit. Now, let me make it clear, atrocities like the bombing of Brussels are despicable. The same goes for the attacks in Paris.
However, within a few days of Brussels, there was an IS suicide bomb in Iraq which killed the same number of people. On the BBC website, which was giving tremendous coverage on Brussels, with stories on the events, the investigations, the victims and whatever else they could squeeze into an article, there was one perfunctory piece of barely a few paragraphs covering the deaths in Iraq.
The message, whether intentional or not, is that European lives are more important than Middle Eastern ones. But, this aside, the very fact that the Western media makes this a Muslim versus Europe issue misses the point entirely.
IS are beasts and they attack all sorts, including Muslims. This is not a West versus Islam issue, this is a global issue about well-organised terrorists terrorising the world.
Unless we deal with IS in that way, I fear that all that is being done is that we are playing into their filthy, bloodstained hands.