Mark Steyn also Misses the Point about David Amess’ Assassination

Ali Harbi Ali, the assassin responsible for the murder of Tory MP David Amess, was tried last week and duly found guilty. There really couldn’t be any doubt, as the thug didn’t try to run away or deny his crime. He was caught bang to rights. His sentencing elicited due comment from various politicos and members of the media class, one of whom was Mark Steyn. Steyn’s a right-winger with a strong hatred of Islam. He has been on various far right news media, giving viewers the benefit of his opinion on Islam. I don’t know if he was ever on Ezra Levant’s Rebel Media, a Canadian internet broadcaster with miniscule rating and a very anti-Islam attitude, but it wouldn’t surprise me. He was, however, out in New Hampshire sharing the airwaves with Reaganite blowhard Rush Limbaugh on his station. That was before Limbaugh finally gave up the ghost and left this Earth. Now he appears occasionally on GB News. As he did a few days ago, to criticise mainly Labour politicians for failing to mention the elephant in the room: that the motivation behind Amess’ murder was Islam and its hatred of the west.

The Labour politicos had put the blame on a number of factors. These included a generally increasingly confrontational and violent attitude towards politicians and intolerance towards anybody who doesn’t share the same points of view. The evidence for this is the abusive messages, including threats of death, rape and violence, sent to MPs. Others also tried to put it into some kind of context by placing it with the various other assassination and assassination attempts that have occurred. The most notable of these was Jo Cox’s murder by a White nationalist, but there was also the attempt on the life of Lib Dem MP a few years ago by a maniac with a samurai sword, which claimed the life of one of his staff. But Steyn considered that all this missed the point, and dishonoured Amess’ memory because the motive behind his killer was abundantly clear: he was a Muslim seeking to kill an infidel. He’d marched up and down looking for victims before finally deciding on Amess.

But Steyn’s analysis of his motives also misses the point. Harbi Ali wasn’t simply motivated by the bigot’s hatred of the unbeliever. No, he said that he was moved to do what he did in order to protect Muslims from being killed by the west. And this supports William Blum’s observations behind the animosity towards the West in the Dar al-Islam. Blum was a long-term, bitter critic of American imperialism and its many wars. He states in one of his books that the world’s Muslims don’t hate us because they envy our freedoms or any of the other explanations offered by the right. He states that the reason they hate us is simply because we keep invading their countries. And he supports this with polling stats and comments from various authorities and Muslim spokespeople.

I don’t doubt he’s right. Bush and Blair’s wars have devastated Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, all of which seem to have been waged partly for geopolitical purposes, as well as the benefit of the oil industry and western multinationals. Hundreds of thousands have been killed in the Middle East, and millions displaced. Such aggression is going to leave much hatred behind it amongst those on the receiving end.

But a left Labour party Zoom event against imperialism remarked about a year ago that the people and forces behind these imperialist wars seem to be trying to stage a comeback. And these invasions were all sold to the British and American public as a response to an imminent threat – true in the case of Afghanistan after 9/11, a complete lie in the case of Iraq and the imaginary Weapons of Mass Destruction – and as liberating these benighted nations from evil tyrants. We were going to give them freedom and democracy. But this hasn’t worked. In the case of Afghanistan, it created the massively corrupt government of Hamid Karzai, who was determined to screw as much as he could out of his countrymen before scarpering to America when it all came tumbling down.

There are real problems with Islam. I’ve recently blogged about the appearance of bigoted, reactionary mullahs appearing on Islamic networks preaching jihad and the enslavement of unbelievers, despite two centuries or so of abolitionist preaching and legislation by Muslim anti-slavery activists. Fanatical imams have preached intolerance towards non-Muslims and gays in British and western mosques to the serious concern of many bog-standard, ordinary British Muslims. Several times worshippers at these mosques tried to alert the authorities, only to find themselves ignored. But that obviously doesn’t mean that there is a problem with the religion as a whole. As we’ve been reminded, the actions of terrorists don’t represent Muslims as a whole.

But the motive behind Amess’ murder wasn’t simply ‘Islam’. It was outrage at the deaths in the Muslim world that resulted from the west’s wars and invasions. Amess didn’t deserve to be killed, and Ali Harbi Ali certainly deserves to be sent to prison and not get out. But it needs to be realised what his motives were. And by simply blaming Islam, Steyn very definitely misses the point. Some of this is almost certainly because of his own deep hostility to Islam. But another reason may be that if he mentions it and gives it the discussion it deserves, it would cast serious doubt on the wisdom and effectiveness of further such actions and wars in the future.

And we can’t have that. Not when the west’s ability to put fear and awe into the rest of the world, and the interests of the oil industry and multinationals like Haliburton are at stake.

Tags: 9/11, Abolitionism, Abuse, Ali Harbi Ali, Assassination, Conservatives, Corruption, Death Threats, Ezra Levant, Gays, GB News, Haliburton, Hamid Karzai, Imperialism, Internet, Iraq Invasion, Islamism, Islamophobia, Jo Cox, Labour Party, Liberal Democrats, Mark Steyn, Multinationals, Murder, New Hampshire, Rebel Media, Ronald Reagan, Rush Limbaugh, Violence, Wars, White Nationalism, William Blum