White Guilt and Islamic Extemism

by Shelby Steele

White guilt in the West -- especially in Europe and on the American left --[sees] Islamic extremism as a response to oppression. The West is soterrified of being charged with its old sins of racism, imperialism andcolonialism that it makes oppression an automatic prism on the non-Westernworld, a politeness.

But Islamic extremists don't hate the West because theyare oppressed by it. They hate it precisely because the end of oppressionand colonialism -- not their continuance -- forced the Muslim world tocompete with the West. Less oppression, not more, opened this world to thesense of defeat that turned into extremism.

...Over and over, white guilt turns the disparity in development between Israeland her neighbors into a case of Western bigotry. ...But white guilt's most dangerous suppression is to keep from discussion themost conspicuous reality in the Middle East: that the Islamic world long agofell out of history. Islamic extremism is the saber-rattling of aninferiority complex.

http://tinyurl.com/eo8ra.