"The Terrorist Next Door"

[via On the Face] Here’s one of those instances where a blogger happened to be “right there”: Ahmet of Thinking Blog lives across the street from one of the houses that was raided in Saturday’s arrest of suspected terrorists and took pictures.

In a later blog entry titled The Terrorist Next Door, Ahmet — a Muslim himself — writes that the Muslim community is going to have to do some soul-searching:

In this atmosphere of the self perpetual cycles of unexamined and unchallenged dogma, coupled with the predominant passive-aggressive mentality in addition to an entitlement mindset that is in a constant state of self imposed victimhood it becomes easy to lure young minds into thinking they can become instant heros/revolutionaries. An instant illusion of purpose, belonging, and mission.

In addition, contemporary Islamic ideology is in dire need of reform, and those of us who are capable of speaking out have to speak out or, as I repeatedly said in this blog, the terrorists will speak for us. The common polarized interpretation of Islam serves no one no good. I can’t deny that there are injustices that Muslims are on the receiving end of and that the West has a big role in that; but two wrongs can never make a right.

There are legal, legitimate, and honorable ways to fight injustice; terrorism is by no means one of them. You can’t take revenge on someone who killed your brother by killing his! It’s plain insanity, and out of the entire population of Muslims around the world, those who live in the West should understand this best, but the state of withdrawal and disengagement in which these Muslims live in within the “Walls of the West” plays directly into this.

To summarize, Muslims in the West have an approach towards the society in which they live that alienates them and creates a sense of artificial antagonism. This usually produces an identity problem for young Muslims who naturally need a sense of belonging. It is in this self imposed atmosphere of cultural hostility, in the middle of the Us vs. Them, that terror recruitment thrives.

The question now is: Who’s responsibility is it to engage these Muslims?