From Paris to Vienna, from insult to injury

Hypocrisy kills

            Like so many all around Europe now, one cannot help but ask himself: What is going on in Europe? Insult and cheap mockery shown as value. A teacher beheaded. People praying in church get killed. A priest walking down the street gets gunned down. Mayhem in downtown Vienna. And we don’t even know how this will still escalate. How we got so far?

            The sad truth is that we are here for decades. The blunt truth is that hypocrisy kills. Even more than guns and knives. Were we all not here for decades all the condemnations from the Muslim organizations after the tragedies and all the media agitation for hatred would not be so utterly familiar, like a tune from a classic melody.

            Is it not hypocrisy that the same politicians, the same societies, which were warmly supporting the terrorists in Syria calling them “freedom fighters” and “moderate rebels” suddenly call the same thing terrorism in Europe? What is freedom and supported rebellion in Aleppo and Mosul is terrorism in Vienna and Marseille? Is it not hypocrisy shipping back known terrorists, men, and women, Western citizens from the ranks of the Islamic State in fear “they would get unfair treatment in the Syrian dictatorship”, and when they do in the West what they have been doing for years in the Middle East many blame all Muslims for that? Is it not hypocrisy to say that “Islam is waging war on the Western civilization”, while only in the last decade the vast majority of the victims by Islamist terrorism were themselves Muslims? While a large number of these movements kill with Western guns and in most cases in countries ravaged by the wars of the West. Is that not hypocrisy to post “Pray for Vienna” on Facebook profiles, while a day later 35 people got gunned down in Kabul University and that did not even make it to the headlines? Is it not hypocrisy to say: “Yeah, but that’s the Middle East. They are like that! They deserve that.” That is the attitude we get from the mainstream media. But no one deserves that.

            It is not hypocrisy from so many Muslim groups to demand dignity and respect in Western societies, while they don’t get that and they hardly bother to even demand that from their own governments? Demanding respect and acceptance, with so many times showing none of it? It is not hypocrisy from leaders, like as-Sīsī to outrage for Macron’s misjudged statements, while he himself is criticized for pulling down mosques all over Egypt? Is it not hypocrisy to claim lack of respect from someone like Erdoğan, who only a few months ago so intentionally mocked Christians with transforming Hagia Sophia into a mosque, just for a cheap political show? Is that hypocrisy to call for boycotts and retaliation for caricatures and some truly unwise statements, while a big segment of the Middle East itself is critical with the current state of affairs? While opening a mosque anywhere in Europe is an easy thing, doing the same anywhere in the Middle East is virtually impossible. Let alone one wants to open a church.

            In this tragic sequence, in this shameless political-ideological scheme there are many culprits, few are the villains and so numerous are the victims. A teacher went far with testing limits, but he is the victim of the system giving him this task, of a ministry shamefully hiding the fact he only followed the curriculum, and of a society utterly believing that mocking and destroying everything sacred is a virtue. That destroying its own moral boundaries somehow entitles to do the same everywhere in the world.

            And his murderer being the criminal he is, is also a victim of a social background which groomed him for that. How can 18 years old have such a shallow life to feel any deed in severing a head and advertising it as an achievement? And most of the young men, who traveled to Syria, Iraq, and so many other parts of the world to kill are murderers, who are victims of societies, which could not take them in. Which always made them feel different, and which failed them to show any other way. Societies, which always told them they can become Mesut Özils, only to be “just a Turk” at the end. Just as much as their comrades from so many other countries in the Middle East, they are also victims of the Brotherhood, its sheikhs, societies, and political movements disguised as a charity, which uses these people only as assets. While they are hiding behind their positions and routinely giving out hypocritical statements after every event. Soullessly hiding behind millions of ordinary Muslims, who are equally mortified by each new atrocity. Victims they are as well, being used in a political game, provoked and mocked into even bigger despair.

            And victims are those Western, or European societies, which are being terrified over and over, and which are led to hatred and fear. Led by politicians, who just like Macron now, keep provoking even more tragedy, while promising themselves as the only true guarantors of peace and safety.

            And in their hands, victims are the media anchors and “experts”, who make their fame and fortune on the hatred frenzy after each tragedy. Selling fear and anger, and selling their names for glory. With all their wrongdoings they are victims of the manipulation they fed with. And of the careful distancing from those they selling hate against, which could in any way distort the picture they broadcast so eagerly. The picture of political propaganda that there is an easy solution here.

            Hypocrisy kills. Kills more than those gunmen and their bullets they fire. Their action leads to the martyrdom of a handful of people. But hypocrisy plunges segments of societies into despair every day. Hypocrisy from the other side fuels hatred, justifies violence, being an unlimited pool of new tragedies. Hypocrisy fuels arrogance and makes people believe that mocking and insult have to be endured as “the natural part of life”, while hypocrisy from the other sides terrifies people. And fear, as 2020 alone is the prime example to it, makes people do incomprehensible things.

            Giving in to hatred is easy. To outrage is easy. Solutions are not. Especially when the majority feels just fine like this.