ISIS has been active in recent weeks, attacking civilians in Belgium, Iraq, and Pakistan. With the death toll reaching more than a hundred people– just within a week– we struggle as a society to answer challenging questions.
The common question asked by many people (usually Christians) is: “Why don’t Muslims condemn the ISIS attacks en masse?”
(The same question could be asked of the Christians about the many recent right-wing nut job attacks in the US, but it isn’t. Talk about privilege.)
Ismaël Saidi, a Belgian film and theater director, has answered that question once and for all. In a french Facebook post (which has since been deleted), Saidi gave a beautiful and heartfelt answer to the question on so many people’s minds.
Saidi’s words explain perfectly the sense of loss and of communal mourning after a horrible terrorist attack.
“‘Why aren’t Muslims taking to the streets en masse to condemn the attacks?’
We must not forget that Muslims are no more of a homogenous group than Christians, Buddhists, or atheists. All modern religions have more and less extreme factions, and an extremist version of any religion is capable of producing terrorist attacks
Featured image is by Daniel Zanini H., available under a Creative Commons 2.0 license.
