Islamist terrorists rarely make an effort to conceal their religious motivation. But some in the West—prominent politicians, intellectuals, journalists, and others—are ready to conceal it for them, and instead to justify their actions by assigning moral responsibility wholly to the affluent West. Paul Hollander writes:
We are . . . instructed that it is Western governments and societies that radicalized the terrorists—bred terror—by the colonialism of the past, the failure to integrate new immigrants, our refusal to allow them to voice their just grievances, and, finally, our demonization of them for no other reason than their disagreements with us [over such things as] the religiously sanctioned mistreatment of women or the sharia law that justifies stoning female adulterers to death, chopping off the hands of thieves, . . . flogging other criminals, [and] fatwas against the likes of the novelist Salman Rushdie, targeted to be killed as punishment for blasphemy. Presumably all such disagreements should be seen as matters of cultural diversity and tolerated in a good-natured, nonjudgmental manner.
Such explanations . . . suggest that the perpetrators had little choice in the matter. . . . In this scheme, only the powerful, the top dogs and victimizers, are capable of making choices and thus can be held responsible for their actions; the underdogs, the victims, the victimized are not in a position to make morally relevant choices as their behavior is determined by brutal social forces.
Read more on Weekly Standard: http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/marx-and-koran_850146.html