Psychoanalyst Carl Jung spoke of an archetypal energy he defined as “the shadow.” Basically, it’s the part of an individual (or the tribal group they most identify with) that he or she cannot own. The psychological means to disowning this shadow is effected by projecting it onto a target group.
Between the long entrenched imprint of Original Sin (and in the East, the idea of karma) and the history of warfare, there’s always a marginal group available upon whom to project this shadow. That’s why Hitler’s use of Jews–as the major scapegoat population–worked to help create military fervor.
As Dr. Martin Luther King exposed, the U.S. is the #1 purveyor of violence in the world. Outside of the U.S., populations polled see the U.S as the main terrorist nation. After all, with most of its industrial base gutted, its primary exports are war and Hollywood’s sexed up versions of violence AS entertainment.
I preface my comment with these introductory remarks because the whole premise of putting Muslims on the defensive is proof positive of this shadow projection.
Like millions of persons, I believe that 911 was in Inside Job. MANY wars have been started on the basis of fabricated triggers.
That means if Muslims were not the architects of the destruction wrought at the World Trade Center, some other entity was.
Beyond that, it’s estimated by reliable sources that over one million persons were slaughtered in Iraq based on war launched on the basis of wholly fabricated evidence. That was a massive war crime; nor did that major wound stop reverberating.
Instead, what it unleashed helped to destabilize Syria and further aggression on the part of U.S/MIC and NATO forces similarly bludgeoned Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Mali, and Syria.
That Muslims should be arguing for THEIR innocence, or arguing against the ruse that THEY are “the savages” and guilty of all this violence is pure theater of the absurd.
Put the U.S. Generals, the architects of endless wars, the authors of The Project For A New American Century, the war profiteers, and the politicians who traffic in aggression in order to win macho brownie points on trial! Make THEM answer for THEIR crimes of aggression, and leave the Muslim community alone!
This is no different than a prosecutor putting the rape victim on trial, or the press crucifying the behaviors of the kid shot down by a rabid police officer, or a community left to defend itself against the sorts of deregulatory heists that are engineered by the moneyed elites.