When You Can't Fix Yourself, Fix Everyone Else

When Nora Loretto, President of the Ryerson Student Union, took her pen and ceremoniously signed the agreement in principle on behalf of the RSU, to join in an alliance to mount an offensive against alleged bias in media against Muslims, whether she understands her actions or not, she fired a shot across the bow of your fundamental freedoms.

Discrimination, they allege, is at play when a magazine like Macleans serially runs articles criticizing Islam, without an editorial counterbalance. It sure is. And I happen to be glad they have that right.

The Osgoode law students, at the center of the the claims against Macleans paint a picture, of a society that is just looking for someone to hate. In their minds, we've gotten bored of hating Jews, and "the Muslims" are our new hate-dolls.

Normally when somebody starts reducing their supposed plight to these terms, you turn the channel in your brain onto what's for dinner?. But this isn't one of those times, because these people are serious about scapegoating the problems of Islam onto something else other than Islam.

When the Mohammed Cartoons were published in a Danish newspaper, it was not, six months later, the cartoons who rioted in the streets causing property damage and injury.

When Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gough was murdered in 2004, it was not the film he made that killed him. It was, as a matter of fact: Mohammed Bouyeri.

When the London subways were bombed in 2005, it was not UK foreign policy. It was rather, Mohammed Sidique Khan, Hasib Hussain, Shehzad Tanweer and Germaine Lindsay.

When the Madrid trains were bombed in 2004, it was not Spain's participation in Iraq that bombed the trains, it was a group of Moroccan, Syrian, and Algerian nationals.

When the Paddy's Pub in Bali was blown up in 2002, it was not John Howard who set off the bombs. Rather, it was planned and carried out by a group led by Abu Bakar Bashir.

When four US passenger jets were hijacked in 2001, two of which flew into and subsequently destroyed the World Trade Center, killing thousands, one which flew into the Pentagon, and another which crashed in Pennsylvania, it was not US foreign policy that steered the aircraft to their final destinations. It was nineteen hijackers, commanded by Mohamed Atta, carrying out the orders of al-Qaeda.

The last time I checked, "foreign policy" can't fly passenger airliners.

What is the point of re-iterating these incidents? Well, it demonstrates a double standard.

To argue that the victim nations of these attacks are agent in their own victimhood, is to suggest that agency itself lies both with the victim and the actor. If this is true, then you must take this no fault logic to it's ultimate conclusion: if Western policy is responsible for Islamic terrorism, then it is equally fair to say, that Islamic terrorism is responsible for Islamophobia.

Of course, anti-Islamophobia activists rarely, if ever, cite Islamic terrorism for the fear which Westerners have of Islam as a whole. No real Muslim is a terorrist, they say, so the point is moot. Convenient.

What can we extrapolate from this oversight? Potentially that, the West is to blame for both the terrorism of which it is a victim, and for the resultant Islamophobia. At no point, does the agency of Muslims themselves come into play.

Certainly you can argue, and you'd be right to argue that Muslims already start from an unfair place, and that public perception is against them. Sure. But it is not my responsibility to reclaim Muslims' good name. It is not Maclean's responsibility to reclaim their good name. It's certainly not the bloody government's responsibility.

It is the responsibility of Muslims to stand up for liberal values, within and all around.

There are Muslims that are standing up. Tarek Fatah and the Muslim Canadian Congress do plenty of good. Irshad Manjii has been an excellent moderate voice. I know that Tarek and Irshad don't see eye-to-eye, but that's part of debate in an open society.

When a Muslim runs to a government agency, like the Canadian Human Rights Commission, and asks the government to fix their religion's image problem, perhaps it's time to look in the mirror. You are an agent of your own destiny. It will be the most liberating day of your life when you realize that.