| Lawlight said: Well, the Grand Mufti of Australia blamed the Western world for the attacks in Paris and he wasn't arrested. Minorities are the only ones allowed to speak freely. |
That's not what he did. He said that the western world's approach to dealing with the terrorist threat is wrong, and that racism and islamophobia is only encouraging further terrorism. He didn't blame the western world for the attacks, he said that the west needed to change their approach.
Here's what he literally said: "These recent incidents highlight the fact that current strategries to deal with the threat of terrorism are not working. It is therefore imperative that all causative factors such as racism, Islamophobia, curtailing freedoms through securitisation, duplicitous foreign policies and military intervention must be comprehensively addressed."
His words were poorly chosen, but there's a huge difference between that and Trump's call for discrimination and persecution of muslims. The point he's making is entirely legitimate - you can't defeat terrorism by military action. You defeat it by removing the conditions that result in radicalisation. And until people stop scapegoating a religion within which about 99.99% of adherents are just regular people wanting to live their lives, and start treating the problem of terrorism as the kind of problem it really is - the result economic and social injustices - you won't be able to resolve the problem of terrorism. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't blame terrorists for their actions - we most certainly should. But a terrorist act is different from the collective concept of "terrorism".
That's what he was clearly *trying* to say. Unfortunately, by using the phrase "causative factors", he's implying direct causality. He should have said "enabling factors". Kind of like how a wife isn't to blame if her husband is an alcoholic, but if she buys him alcohol, and she encourages him to get out of the house (knowing that he's going to go to the bar), then she's certainly enabling his alcoholism. The western world isn't to blame for the attacks in Paris, but it is certainly enabling terrorism by creating the conditions within which terrorist organisations recruit people.
