Islamic State Atrocities the Product of ‘Grievances’?

Barack ObamaWhile many have rightfully criticized U.S. President Obama’s recent assertion that the Islamic State “is not Islamic,” some of his other equally curious but more subtle comments pronounced in the same speech have been largely ignored.

Consider the president’s invocation of the “grievances” meme to explain the Islamic State’s success: “At this moment the greatest threats come from the Middle East and North Africa, where radical groups exploit grievances for their own gain. And one of those groups is ISIL—which calls itself the Islamic State.”

Obama’s logic, of course, is fortified by an entire apparatus of professional apologists who make the same claim.  Thus Georgetown professor John Esposito—whose apologetics sometimes morph into boldfaced lies—also recently declared that “The “primary drivers [for the Islamic State’s violence] are to be found elsewhere,” that is, not in Islam but in a “long list of grievances.”

In other words and once again, it’s apparently somehow “our fault” that Islamic State Muslims are behaving savagely—crucifying, beheading, enslaving, and massacring people only on the basis that they are “infidels”:  thus when IS herds and slaughters “infidel” men (citing the example of the prophet)—that’s because they’re angry at something America did; when IS captures “infidel” women and children, and sells them on the sex-slave market (citing Islamic teachings)—that’s because they’re angry at something America did; when IS bombs churches, breaks their crosses, and tells Christians to convert or die (citing Islamic scriptures)—that’s because they’re angry at something America did.

Although the “grievance” meme flies in the face of logic, it became especially popular after the 9/11 al-Qaeda strikes on America. The mainstream media, following the Islamist propaganda network Al Jazeera’s lead, uncritically picked up and disseminated Osama bin Laden’s videotapes to the West where he claimed that al-Qaeda’s terror campaign was motivated by grievances against the West—grievances that ranged from U.S. support for Israel to failure for the U.S. to sign the Kyoto Agreement concerning climate change.

Of course, that was all rubbish, and I have written more times than I care to remember about how in their internal Arabic-language communiques to fellow Muslims that never get translated to English, Osama, al-Qaeda, and virtually every Islamist organization make it a point to insist that jihad is an Islamic obligation that has nothing to do with grievances.

Consider Osama’s own words in an internal letter to fellow Saudis:

Our talks with the infidel West and our conflict with them ultimately revolve around one issue — one that demands our total support, with power and determination, with one voice — and it is: Does Islam, or does it not, force people by the power of the sword to submit to its authority corporeally if not spiritually?

Yes. There are only three choices in Islam: [1] either willing submission [conversion]; [2] or payment of the jizya, through physical, though not spiritual, submission to the authority of Islam; [3] or the sword — for it is not right to let him [an infidel] live. The matter is summed up for every person alive: Either submit, or live under the suzerainty of Islam, or die. (The Al Qaeda Reader, p. 42)

Conversion, submission, or the sword is, of course, the mission of the Islamic State—not alleviating “grievances.”  Yet it’s worse than that; for unlike al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, from day one of its existence, has made it very clear—in Osama’s words, “with power and determination, with one voice”—that its massacres, enslavements, crucifixions, and beheadings of “infidels” are all based on Islamic law or Sharia—not silly “grievances” against the West. Unlike al-Qaeda, the Islamic State is confident enough to avoid the grievances/taqiyya game and forthrightly asserts its hostility for humans based on their religious identity.

Yet by slipping the word “grievances” to explain the Islamic State’s Sharia-based savageries, Obama apparently hopes America has been thoroughly conditioned like Pavlov’s dog to automatically associate Islamic world violence with “grievances.”

What Obama fails to understand—or fails to mention—is that, yes, the Islamic State, al-Qaeda, and countless angry Muslims around the world are indeed often prompted to acts of violence by “grievances.”  But as fully explained here, these “grievances” are not predicated on any universal standards of equality or justice, only a supremacist worldview.

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  • NSNZ

    The root of the problem is islam. Stop misleading and misinforming a knowledgeable public you useless politicians. FACE FACTS!

    • mollysdad

      The root of the problem is Islam. Muslims are in religious error, which is itself of an immoral nature. So it’s the fault of the Muslims.

      • ObamaYoMoma

        Per the doctrine of abrogation that is universally accepted by all Muslims, all the earlier issued peaceful verses of the Koran that once made Islam a religion have all been abrogated and replaced by the latter issued infamous sword verses of the Koran in which they conflict with and that command all Muslims to wage jihad, which is a “holy” war waged by ALL MUSLIMS in the cause of Allah against ALL INFIDELS to ultimately make Islam and its followers supreme throughout the world, then it is obvious that Islam is not a religion.

        Indeed, how can Islam be a religion if all the earlier issued peaceful verses of the Koran that once made Islam a religion have all been abrogated and are no longer applicable? The answer, of course, is Islam is not a religion, but something else, i.e., a very draconian form of totalitarianism that seeks to make itself and its followers supreme.

        Thus, Muslims masquerade Islam as being a religion to dupe its intended victims. Is waging war, allegedly in the cause of Allah, against all non-Muslims to ultimately make Islam and its followers supreme enough to make Islam a religion? Hardly.

        • http://aliasbarackobama.blogspot.com/ Dr. Ron Polland

          Well said! Muhammed said, “War is deception,” and Dar al-Islam, the “World of Islam” is in an eternal conflict with Dar al-Harm, the “World of War.”

          Sunni Islam is at war with the non-Muslim world into which it dumps other Muslim groups, like the Shia and Alawites, whom it considers to be unIslamic.

          BUT, their #1 target are Christians.

          So, ISIS is NOT “UnIslamic” as Imam Obama said. ISIS is at war with everyone it considers to be “UnIslamic.”

          Obama hates Jedws and Christians. If people pulled their heads out of their rumps, they would have known the reasons why he sides with Islam, 100% of the time.

  • ConcernedCitizen999

    The un-American President’s animosity toward the United States is
    motivated by his own sense of personal grievance, so when he affirms Islam’s
    lie that it’s violence is motivated by grievance he is just gathering about
    himself enemies of his enemy to bolster his own sense of grievance. Whatever
    affinity Obama may or may not have for Islam he is at one with them in this, his
    desire to demolish traditional America.

  • Bamaguje

    If Islamic terror is because of grievances against the West, what about Jihadist insurgencies and terrorism in Somalia, Nigeria, India, Russia, Phillipines, Kenya, Thailand, India, Mali etc?
    How come only Muslims have grievances that drive them to mass murdering savagery?
    Other than being non-Muslims, what grievances does ISIS have against Yazidis and Christians in Iraq?

  • WhiteHunter

    Slightly, but only slightly, off-topic, one of the several parallels between Osama bin Laden and Obama bin Laden comes to mind after reading this excellent article: the inspiration and structure of ObamaCare. Consider the striking similarities:

    There are only three choices in the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”): [1] either willing submission
    [enrollment]; [2] or payment of the jizya penalty or “tax,” through physical, though not ideological , submission to the authority of the Federal Government; [3] or IRS harassment and imprisonment for tax evasion — for
    it is not right to let him [an unenrolled person] keep his existing plan or doctor. The matter is summed up
    for every person alive: Either submit, or live under the suzerainty of an all-knowing, all-powerful government bureaucracy, or die from cancer.

    • kafir4life

      FABULOUS analogy!
      islam and Stinky(BO)Care. Both disgusting. Much like both of their inventors, mohamadcheese (Peanut Butter Under Ham) and oblamo (Plantation Better Under Him)

  • BMS

    Our Muslim American President and his Democratic cronies will NEVER bring themselves to condemn Islam in any way shape or form even though all one has to do is look around the world to see that almost every problem is caused by Islamists. I have no doubt that that numbskull Pelosi will soon be telling us how each Isis member is a beacon of divinity who should be welcome here in America, like all the illegals flooding across the border, with open arms.

    • ObamaYoMoma

      Our Muslim American President and his Democratic cronies will NEVER bring themselves to condemn Islam in any way shape or form

      You mean sort of like GWB proclaimed Islam to be a so-called “religion of peace” upon the US being the victim the greatest violent jihad attacks ever perpetrated in the history of Islam, and how can we ever forget his two fantasy based nation-building missions in Iraq and Afghanistan to lift up Muslims (the eternal mortal enemy of all infidels) out of poverty because like a fool he actually thought that “poverty and despair” were the “root causes” of terrorism.

      I’m sorry to inform you but Republican Presidents and Republicans don’t exactly have a record of success either when it comes to protecting America and Americans from the scourge of Islam either. The harsh reality is both political parties in this country are incredibly incompetent today. Which also explains why millions of Muslim stealth jihadists have been allowed to migrate to America in mass.

      • http://aliasbarackobama.blogspot.com/ Dr. Ron Polland

        Bush had the war won in Iraq. Obama snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. His refusal to have a status of forces agreement and his decision to pull out every single person in Iraq JUST TO WIN HIS RE-ELECTION IN 2012 is the reason why we have ISIS.

        That, and the fact that Obama has been directly arming Al Qaeda in Libya and Al Qaeda in Iraq who are now the members of ISIS.

        Let me repeat this so you know the difference:

        Bush won the war in Iraq and had it stablilized. He rightly predicted in 2007 that announcing to the enemy a precipitous total withdrawl from Iraq without a status of forces agreement would leave a power vacuum in Iraq that would be filled by Islamic radicals.

        Bush was right.

        Obama was an A-hole.

        And Mitt Romney was handed the path to winning the election by citing Obama’s foreign policy disasters, and he would up simply agreeing with whatever Obama said in the debates.

        Mitt threw the 2012 election and he’s running again? That’s chutzpah!

        • ObamaYoMoma

          Bush had the war won in Iraq. Obama snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

          Really? We won? What exactly did we win over there? List them all. Be very specific. List everything we won that was remotely worth the trillions of dollars we wasted, and the thousands of lives of young brave America troops who either died on the battlefields or were maimed for life all for nothing. Indeed, all for the cause of two fantasy based nation-building missions that were preordained to fail even before the first shots were ever fired and that inevitably turned into this nation’s two greatest strategic blunders ever in American history.

          For anyone to be dumb enough to actually believe that we somehow won the Iraq war until Obama snatched defeat out from the jaws of victory, you’d have to be just as mentally incompetent as GWB is when it comes to understanding the real nature of the threat emanating from Islam, and you’d also have to be a very heavy Kool-Aid drinker too.

          So apparently you agreed with GWB’s two fantasy based nation-building missions in Iraq and Afghanistan to lift up Muslims (the eternal mortal enemies of all infidels in the world, including you and me) out of poverty, because like GWB you also believe that “poverty and despair” are the “root causes” of terrorism. Okay.

          Meanwhile, you need to explain also how it is you somehow believe that lifting up our eternal mortal enemies is not exceedingly counterproductive to our own national interests and national security.

          By the way, the manifestation of ISIS was always inevitable as soon as Saddam was removed from power. However, it was delayed somewhat a few years by the presence of American troops.

          Evidently, you are one of those ignoramuses that are dumb enough to believe that the surge in Iraq somehow led to the destruction of AQ in Iraq. Actually, it didn’t, as is so very apparent today. They simply faded away into the woodwork like roaches until the heat died down only to come out to play again once the American troops, thank God, exited the scene.

          Meanwhile, if we make the same mistake of sending troops over there to wipe out ISIS this time around, they will simply just repeat the process all over again. Indeed, you haven’t learned a damn thing yet in all those years. Not a damn thing, and that’s utterly pathetic.

          Apparently, you are just as stupid of Islam and of the Islamic totalitarian world as the day the 9/11 violent jihad attacks happened. Indeed, after all those event filled years you still don’t have the first clue, probably because you have been way too busy swallowing up all the Kool-Aid. We always hear about Dhimmicrat low information voters. Dude you are the personification of a Republican low information voter.

          Bush won the war in Iraq and had it stablilized. He rightly predicted in 2007 that announcing to the enemy a precipitous total withdrawl from Iraq without a status of forces agreement would leave a power vacuum in Iraq that would be filled by Islamic radicals.

          Bush was right.

          Wow…fantastic you are one of those lame Karl Rove acolytes that are going around and saying with a straight face that GWB was a genius. Dude…take it from me and the piano player, you don’t have the first clue how exceedingly dumb you are.
          Obama was an A-hole.

          I disagree. He is an A-hole, and a very destructive A-hole at that, but nonetheless he didn’t lose the war in Iraq. Because that war was preordained to fail even before the first shot was fired, exactly like the war in Afghanistan already failed too, but you are too dumb to know it. But you will in time.

          And Mitt Romney was handed the path to winning the election by citing Obama’s foreign policy disasters, and he would up simply agreeing with whatever Obama said in the debates.

          Mitt threw the 2012 election and he’s running again? That’s chutzpah!

          And that has to do with what? Are you a Jeb Bush supporter or something? You sound exactly like a Jeb Bush supporter. Nevertheless, when it comes to understanding the nature of the threat emanating from Islam, Mitt Romney is almost as dumb as you are, and that’s pretty damn dumb.

          Meanwhile, lay off the Kool-Aid please and while you are at it, why don’t you learn a little about Islam for a change? Indeed, it’s amazing to still run into people every once and awhile allegedly on the right, (although GWB was a stealth leftist), that to this day are still as dumb as you are about the true nature of Islam. Amazing…dude you blow my mind.

  • Ellsworth Toohey

    Grievances ? Indeed, and going on for 14 centuries.

  • JB Ziggy Zoggy

    When scum like Obama andJohn Esposito say “grievance” I hear “excuse.” As if the perpetually aggrieved islsmopithecines (1400 years and counting) have legitimate grievances against America or anybody else but each other. And Esposito has been dead wrong about every prediction he’s made about islam and islamopithecines over the years, when he wasn’t lying outright. Only a fool would listen to him. That includes every leftist on the West, of course.

    Obama is a traitor. He wants to be allies with ISIS, and calls it ISIL to make it seem like it has a legitimate claim to Syria and the rest of the Levant, even Israel.

  • kafir4life

    Dear President Stinky (BO),
    If the muslims have legitimate grievances, and they are the fault of the US, how about you man up and stick your neck out?

    • SECUREOURBORDERSNOW

      Good one!!

  • Gee

    Reminds me of the claims how Jews cause anti-Semitism. We exist so anti-Semites hate us and we are going to continue to exist.

    The rest of the world can go f*ck themselves if that is a problem.

    Islam tolerates nobody period. So the only answer is don’t tolerate Islam. It must be stopped no matter how mad they get

  • http://batman-news.com Kuffar

    The actions of these scum are the result of their own decisions and their own free will… It has nothing to do with what the west does or or with what Christianity does or has done. I get tired of the leftist apologizers laying the blame of these animals at the feet of Christians or the west. All of North Africa as well as Turkey and the Balkans were Christian at one time. If anyone has grievances it is Christianity…

  • ObamaYoMoma

    The president suggests ISIS’s beheadings, massacres and enslavements are our fault.

    Of course, he does and the reason he can get away with such nonsense is because it is a product of the world mislabeling what are actual violent jihadists as being terrorists. Jihad, in stark contrast to terrorism, is a war waged by ALL MUSLIMS in the cause of Allah against ALL INFIDELS to ultimately make Islam and its followers supreme throughout the world. Violent jihadists don’t murder innocent infidels in cold blood because they are terrorists. Instead, they do it because they only employ “total warfare” tactics per the dictates of Sharia.

    Furthermore, all Muslims in the world are jihadists in one form or another, as opposed to only radicals and extremists as in the case of terrorism, according to the dictates of Islam. Either of the violent variety as in ISIS or of the non-violent variety as in the millions of Muslims that have migrated over here to the USA for the purpose of stealth jihad.

    Meanwhile, all non-conformers in Islamic totalitarian society per the dictates of Islam are summarily executed for either apostasy, blasphemy, or both. Sort of like all non-conformers in old Communist Soviet society were sent to the Soviet Gulags. As Islam more than it is anything else, is a very draconian form of totalitarianism that seeks to make itself supreme, as opposed to being just a so-called religion.

    Terrorism, on the other hand, has traditionally always comprised only radicals and extremists, and in stark contrast to jihad, which is only and always in the cause of Allah to make Islam and its followers supreme, has traditionally been perpetrated for a myriad of different causes and reasons.

    Thus, because Obama, our politicians, and our news media all conflate what is actually violent jihad as somehow being terrorism, they can not only conveniently claim that the perpetrators consist of only radicals and extremists, as opposed to mainstream orthodox Muslims, but that the reason for the attacks were for various grievances such as because of poverty and despair, America’s interventionist foreign policies, greedy American imperialism, or whatever, instead of for always and only in the cause of Allah to ultimately make Islam and its followers supreme throughout the world.

    Nonetheless, if jihad, on the other hand, was properly portrayed and widely known to be a “holy” war waged by ALL MUSLIMS in the cause of Allah against ALL INFIDELS to ultimately make Islam and its followers supreme, and ISIS members were properly portrayed as what they actually are, i.e., violent jihadists, as opposed to terrorists, then it would be impossible for Obama, our politicians, and our news media to all get away with obfuscating the truth about Islam the way they always do today. Because everyone would already know that a jihad is a war waged by Muslims to make Islam and its followers supreme.

    Furthermore, everyone would also automatically know as well that the millions of Muslim immigrants we have living within our midst over here are also pursuing jihad deliberately non-violently in their particular case and by stealth and deception to infiltrate our society and for eventual demographic conquest. Which presents a threat astronomically far greater for us relative to the violent varieties of jihad taking place over there in the Islamic totalitarian world. Now that’s a predicament our politicians hope we never ever discover, because their gross incompetence is responsible for it.

    • elizabeth greeley

      What a great post! Most informative, thank you!!

  • Keith

    Islamists do have 2 genuine “grievances”
    1. European countries invented things developed and advanced, causing their navies and armies to become too powerful for the muslim raiders and slave traders to attack and capture slaves from Europe. (No more blonde haired blue eyed sex slaves)
    2. European countries moved out of Europe and founded empires and new colonies that stopped muslim slave traders throughout the rest of the world. They found that they now had to toe the line and live in peace with the infidels.
    This must have been quite a shock for them when their pedophile slave trading prophet was telling them that they are the best of people who were going to rule the earth. Now they have found a way to get back to behaving how they always have in the past, with the help of the left wing apologists from the western world of course.

  • De Doc

    I got grievances! Now stand still while I hack off your head to address them.

  • MarilynA

    The left’s radical leaders, most of whom have advanced degrees in psychology , have honed the abused spouse syndrome into a fine art of abused citizenry syndrome. First you destroy the victims’ self confidence, by blaming them for everything that happens. If someone does something to the victim it is always the victims fault. This strategy has gone so far that white guilt is taught as fact in our public schools. The American people now cower like frighten women, thinking if they just tried harder, gave more, did more, tried to understand the other view point, that things would be right. The fact is that things will never be right as long as there are bullies in the world. When you get rid of one bully another one will step up to take his place. It’s time the American people realized that if they are responsible for everything bad that happens it stand to reason they are also responsible for everything good. What have Americans done to justify the murder of innocents all over the world by Muslims? What did we do that caused Muslims to behead 4 little girls on their way to school. It’s time Americans woke up before these bullies kill us all.

  • Pericles

    The Islamic State was not founded on ‘grievances’. It was founded on the Koran and Mohammed. It’s only grievance, if any, is that the entire world does not subjugate itself to Islam and Sharia Law nor acknowledge its supremacy. They claim that it is ‘Allah’ who has grievances against Jews, Christians and other kaffir. They are merely the instrumentality by which Allah punishes ‘unbelievers’.

    Cannibals don’t consume human flesh because they have ‘grievances’ against it. They enjoy eating human flesh. Why do we have to weave fantasies explaining this phenomenon beyond its obvious explanation?

    Islam produces terrorists through its teachings, its imams, its sheiks, its mosques, its Koran and Hadiths. Why do some have such great difficulty in grasping this simple and obvious truth?

  • logdon

    To transfer the meme, the fault of all of those rapists who assaulted British girls, (in Rotherham, England alone 1600) does not lie at their doorstep because heaven forfend, Islam forbids violence, after all, it is a religion of peace.

    There must be a victim and a perp here, people don’t rape themselves and following the analogy, all of those 1600 girls must have provoked those peace loving men into and uncontrollable frenzy of sexual violence.

    Naughty girls, eh?

    There can be no other explanation.

    So next time a Pakistani Muslim threatens to set fire to a 13 year old girl or nails the tongue of another to a table, rest assured that this is not in any way their fault.

    We made them do it.

  • El Cid

    Raymond, and one of the left’s major grievances is “colonialism”. The evident problem with that view is that other countries that were once under control of Western colonial powers are now successful economies with improving governance. Even Vietnam is doing pretty well considering. And, they seldom complain about the past. In contrast, there is not one Arab country that can make that claim. And, the remaining Islamic nations are not much better. I am more and more convinced that Islamic victim-hood/supremest ideology is the problem.

  • UnLiberal

    So the left is saying that anyone with grievances is OK to rape and murder innocent people! I always kinda thought that was their mantra but now I know!

  • USARetired

    This dam Muslim will side with Isis every time! He also will not willingly kill any of them!

  • Libslayer

    Islamics are aggrieved that infidels don’t just kill themselves.
    Muslims aren’t hard workers. Take Barry Obama for instance. Please.

  • http://aliasbarackobama.blogspot.com/ Dr. Ron Polland

    We need a 21st Century Crusades.

  • rapid_apathy

    Mohammed coined the term “War is deceit”. They’re not playing social justice politics like those on the left think, this is a war that started 1400 years ago and continues and the only reason it survives aside from its brutality, is its cleverness. Mohammed constantly called himself a victim after he attacked his enemies, he defined ‘persecution’ and ‘oppression’ to mean being ‘persecuted’ from allowing Sharia Law and this victim card playing is a strategy of war they continue to use today. When the left spouts their favorite buzzwords they can’t figure out that oppression to an Islamist means something completely different than it does to a Western intellectual, the Islamist knows this and uses this to his advantage. When the gays and feminists they loathe protest for them, they don’t side with them, but they will use them while they are useful to their cause. If they repeat and cry and go into histrionics about how much of a victim they are, everything is a grievance, well meaning people and the altruistic Westerner will be swayed and manipulated like adults are by crying children. This is a key strategy of Islam and for a good reason: it works.