Muslims: Poster Children of Third World Peoples

In an article on FrontPageMag.com, the pundit Dennis Prager articulates exhaustively seven reasons to explain the irrational elevation of the “Palestinians” into the #1 People Most Politically Oppressed in the World, and contrasts this elevation with the comparative minimization of the plight of the Tibetan people and their much longer, and genuine—as opposed to putative—oppression by the Chinese.

While Prager’s seven reasons are all cogent, he misses the most important reason—the one reason without which all the other seven would not enjoy the traction they do enjoy around the world: The mainstream domination of Politically Correct Multi-Culturalism (PC MC), which:

a) through its subsidiary doctrine of Reverse Racism, elevates any Third World people above any perceived “white Western” people (here, the Jews);

and

b) through its crucial corollary doctrine of Islamic privilege, elevates the Muslims into the Poster Children of Third World Peoples everywhere.

Now, the reader may well note, immediately, the interesting wrinkle we have with Prager’s comparison—namely, that Tibetans are also a Third World people. On the surface, this would seem to militate against my theory here. However, this would ignore the fact that PC MC has , over the past 30 years—and intensifying after 911 up to the present—become inter-woven with Islam: In the last few years, Muslims have become the #1 Representatives of Third World People everywhere: Their grievances, their complaints, their “oppression” take precedence over the concerns and safety of all other peoples and groups—including Third World peoples and groups normally privileged under the PC MC umbrella (e.g., women and gays).

This is why, for example, not only does the world comparatively ignore Tibetans in favor of “Palestinians”, but the world also whitewashes the problem of Thai Buddhists being victimized by Thai Muslims; Christian Filipinos being victimized by Filipino Muslims; Hindu Indians being being victimized by Muslims of the Subcontinental region; Persian Zoroastrians and Baha’i being victimized by Persian Muslims; black Africans (Christian and polytheists) being victimized by African Muslims; Christian Arabs being victimized by Muslim Arabs in the Middle East; ethnic Berbers of North Africa being victimized by Muslims of North Africa; and so forth.

Through the mechanisms of PC MC, Muslims have become the most fashionable—and therefore most protected, respected and whitewashed—Third World people of the entire world. And of all Third World peoples, Muslims least deserve this privilege, making it exceedingly irrational, and downright perilous for non-Muslims of the world.

This—which above I called the corollary doctrine of PC MC—has much to do with three factors:

1) Of all Third World peoples, Muslims have the most cohesive trans-national ideological identity. And, of course, PC MC does not allow questioning the ideology of Islam, not so much because of the corollary doctine of PC MC but more because PC MC in general does not allow questioning any Third World culture or ideology. It is thus an ironic internal paradox of PC MC that its overarching doctrine (protecting Third World cultures in general from criticism and indeed mandating “respect” for them) serves to protect the one Third World culture that is, and has been for centuries, abusing and victimizing other Third World cultures. The singularly trans-national cohesiveness of Islamic culture, then, is one factor explaining the special elevation by PC MC of Muslims to their pre-eminent status of the First in the Third World.

2) The second factor is Islamic violence—both in its actual terror and in the implicit (or often explicit) threat of more violence. Muslims are far more violent than other Third World peoples. (Indeed, as Dennis Prager noted in his comparison of “Palestinians” and Tibetans, there really is no comparison, only stark contrast: since Tibetans have not been violent much at all to far worse treatment they have suffered, while “Palestinians” have been viciously, savagely, grotesquely violent against their putative “oppressors”). Acting with concerted political and social violence and threats of violence all over the world, Muslims generate a subliminal fear of offending them—though this fear among people who are PC MC (which describes the majority of Western people) remains subliminal, semi-conscious, suppressed; because, to acknowledge it would be to acknowledge the darker side of Muslims, which cannot be allowed according to PC MC. At best, and only rarely, whenever the sheer pressure of the mountain of data indicating the volatile violence of Muslims exerts itself on the airtight surface of the ideological box which PC MC people inhabit, some PC MC people may concede to notice that data—but they immediately contextualize and therefore excuse it as being an “understandable reaction” to Western “meddling”, Western “bigotry”, and even Western “oppression”. I.e., the data has nothing to do with Islam, and much to do with the corrupt, decadent, possibly evil West. So the fear persists and exerts a pressure under the surface of thought, actually strengthening the PC MC desire to placate and “respect” Muslims. This subliminal fear will continue to be a factor as long as the unpredictability and savagery of Muslim violence continues; and, after 1,400 years of it, and with its obvious spike in the last quarter century—intensifying post-911—there is no reason to think it will diminish.

3) Closely related to #1 and #2, Muslims—as a consequence of being Third World peoples plus the profoundly military and paramilitary nature of their culture—have become endowed with the romantically Leftist aura of the Third World guerilla “freedom fighter” who always fights in “self-defense” and always fights for “the People” against “oppression” and “injustice”, etc. One could call this the Che-Guevarization of Muslims. (Never mind that it is singularly queer for a Religion to be picking up arms in combat all over the world: this peculiarity is, of course, ignored by followers of PC MC.) Of course, this packaging of the Muslim would not have the widespread traction it enjoys, were it not firmly in accord with the logic of PC MC, whose overarching axiom is that Third World Noble Savages are always innocent and always “oppressed” by the incompetent, corrupt and sometimes even evil West.

I hesitate to note a possible fourth factor—the prominent policies of President Bush in this last decade and the anti-Bush hatred it has generated among the Left, in turn linking that hatred to an intensification of the defense of Islam and Muslims from irrationally perceived abuses of (if not “attacks” on) Muslims and their Islamic culture by the Bush Administration and his “neo-con” supporters in and out of government. While this is an important subsidiary ingredient in the whole cocktail, it doesn’t explain why the majority of conservatives, reaching right up into the White House and the Pentagon, and throughout the West, not merely in America, are also PC MC when it comes to Islam. Most conservatives may not be quite as irrationally and emotionally PC MC about Islam as Leftists are, but they are nevertheless sufficiently PC MC to contribute massively and forcefully to the mainstream dominance of the PC MC ideological machine that continues to be the #1 obstacle to the West waking up and taking appropriate actions with regard to the menace of an Islam Redivivus.