Islam - "Muslims must bear the grunt of their failure"

This is a Muslim talking in the Middle East Times. We need to have a lot more of this. A lot more.

TORONTO -- Muslim Canadians, as Muslims elsewhere in Western societies, have felt increasingly besieged for some time now, both from outside their community and from within.

This sense of isolation, of being misrepresented and misunderstood, will inevitably deepen as the full story of the arrests of 17 Toronto-area Muslims on terrorism charges unfolds.

But whose fault is this? Let us, Muslims, be brutally honest.

We have inherited a culture of denial, of too often refusing to acknowledge our own responsibility for the widespread malaise that has left most of the Arab-Muslim countries in economic, political, and social despair.

Statistics and intergovernmental reports over the past several decades have documented a gap, perhaps now unbridgeable, between Muslim countries and the advanced industrial democracies in the West.

In a recent "failed states index" published in the May/June issue of Foreign Policy magazine, Pakistan, for instance, is ranked among the top 10 failed states in the world - ahead of Afghanistan.

Pakistan is a Muslim country, a nuclear military power, but it can barely feed, clothe, educate, and shelter its population.

The reports on the Arab countries are a dismal catalogue of entrenched tyrannies, failing economies, squandered wealth, gender oppression, persecution of minorities, and endemic violence.

The cleric-led regime in Iran seeks nuclear weapons and threatens to obliterate Israel, repress domestic opposition, and seek confrontation with the West.

Instead of acknowledging the reality of the Arab-Muslim world as a broken civilization, we Muslims tend to indulge instead in blaming others for our ills; deflecting our responsibilities for failures that have become breeding grounds of violence and terrorism.

Many of our intellectuals in public life and our religious leaders in mosques remain adept in double-speak, saying contrary things in English or French and then in Arabic or Farsi or Urdu.

I've been documenting these same things for over two years now. Refreshing to hear a Muslim admit it. Very refreshing.

The whole article is a must read. Here's this Muslims conclusion.

We Muslims are the source of our own misery, and we are not misunderstood by others who see in our conduct a threat to their peace.

Liberals would like to see this continue as it gives them a reason to exist. If Muslims are allowed to arise above all this and fix their problems, liberals will be robbed of a cause to champion and a reason to attack the right. Thus, as disgusting as it is, liberals will continue to be enablers of Muslims misery.
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