Ottawa Citizen Editorial: Why the World Ignores Suicide Bombers in Arab/Muslim Countries

This editorial from the Ottawa Citizen asks some pointed questions about suicide bombers:

See no evil
Ottawa Citizen
February 3, 2010

A mass murder took place this week: A female suicide blew herself up in a crowd that included women and children, killing dozens.

You might not have heard about this because it happened in an Arab country and the world — including the Arab world — doesn’t seem to care much. The bomber struck in Iraq, and her target was a group of religious pilgrims. The pilgrims were Shia Muslims and the bomber is presumed to have been a Sunni.

We, in the West, have fortified our societies as best we can against terrorism, but the sad truth is that the overwhelming majority of victims of suicide bombings are themselves Muslims — killed in their own countries, by fellow Muslims.

Yet Muslim leaders, clerics and governments seem untroubled by the epidemic of fratricide. Their response to offensive cartoons in a Danish newspaper is far more public and sustained than the response to Muslim-on-Muslim massacres.

If a Palestinian civilian dies in the crossfire during a skirmish between Israel and Hamas, the outraged Arab world demands special UN meetings to denounce Israel. But dozens of Arab Shia civilians deliberately blown up by Arab Sunni terrorists? Barely a peep.

This is an old story. It reflects cynicism among Arab-Muslim leaders, who prefer to focus on external enemies, even imaginary ones, rather than real enemies within. And it also reflects our own western racism, whereby no one bats an eye when Muslims blow each other up because, after all, isn’t that what Muslims do?

The innocents who died in Iraq this week deserve better, from all of us.