Why must Muslims be superhuman?
Over the past few weeks this site has seen an upsurge in the number of articles attacking Islam for failing to police its more militant wings. Comparisons have been made with the failure of church leaders to condemn Nazism in the 1930s and the failure of American pastors to condemn racism in the 19th and 20th centuries. In nearly all cases Muslims are labelled wrong because they fail to condemn that which my ancestors (I make no claims about the courage/cowardice of yours) failed to condemn. Why must Muslims be more courageous? Does the globalised world demand that all other societies be braver than the west for the world order to be maintained? Are we really so fragile?
The west has spent centuries arguing the pros and cons of womens rights, universal suffrage and human rights. The Middle East has spent decades. And yet we demand that they change now, in a manner far faster than we did, with far greater bravery than we have ever shown. I guess it's a compliment in some ways, to assume that Muslims are made of better stuff than Westerners. But it is unfair to hold them to a higher standard than we would hold ourselves in the same situation.
After all, our armies, like the terrorists, show no respect for the collateral damage that happens, not even bothering to count the corpses left behind. That is left to journalists from both the East and the West. And yet we demand that the Other take the higher road, that they change faster than we do so that the world more quickly meets our view of rational.
It is this sanctimonious hypocrisy that I personally find most loathsome. They can change in a year because we changed in a decade. They can end infighting, disease, defeat imperialism without difficulty in a decade because we did it in a millenia. When they fail, it is obviously because they aren't trying hard enough.
I have been accused of moral relativism; what kind of moral relativism demands that Islam be better than us?