‘The West Is Far Crueler Than the Islamic World’

Author and publicist Jürgen Todenhöfer lays the main blame for Islamic terrorism and the brutality of the Islamic State directly at the West’s door. On Friday, he wrote that Chancellor Angela Merkel asked the Muslim hierarchy to clarify its position on Islamic violence. But shouldn’t the Christian West be asked to clarify its position on violence first? Islam isn’t the problem, he wrote on his blog. Our wars are the problem, he maintains, calling them terrorism incubation programs.

Todenhöfer argues that Islamic terrorism is the barbaric response of Muslim extremists to the equally barbaric Western military crusades for oil. Without those military incursions, there would be no terrorism in the world today. The predecessor organization to the Islamic State group arose in 2003 in response to America’s invasion of Iraq, according to Todenhöfer. He calls the ultra-violent Islamic State group Bush’s baby.

No Arab country has attacked the West in the past 200 years, while the West has launched numerous murderous attacks on the Muslim world. He notes that Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida killed nearly 3,500 people in the West, but that Bush Jr. killed 500,000 Iraqis after he invaded that nation. His conclusion is that the figures show it’s the West and not the Muslim world that should be clarifying its position on violence.

Todenhöfer has previously written that the West needs to change how it chooses to deal with Islam. He regularly criticizes governments that tend to divide the world into good and evil. The author [of] “Who Cries for Abdul” and “Tanaya: Fallacies in the Crusade Against Terror” most recently made headlines by journeying to the Islamic State group’s stronghold of Mosul in Iraq where he interviewed the German jihadist Christian Emde, who fights alongside Islamic State group forces. In his interview with Todenhöfer, Emde said that after the coming Islamic State group victory, Christians and Jews will have to choose between converting to Islam, paying protection money or being put to the sword.