‘How Dare You?!’ The True Source of the Arab-Israeli Conflict Is a Superiority Complex

The Stream

The Arab-Israeli conflict will never be fully understood — an essential criterion to solving it — until its ultimate source is recognized: Islamic supremacism.

Islamic doctrine, which teaches that Muslim blood is superior to and far more precious than non-Muslim blood (non-Muslims essentially being on a level with dogs and cattle) imbues Muslims with a sense of supremacism over the rest of mankind. And a good portion of Islamic history further enforces it.

This sense of Islamic supremacism was dramatically humbled after European powers defeated and colonized much of the Muslim world. Bred on the notion that “might makes right,” Muslims, for a time, even began emulating the then-unapologetic and triumphant West. Turkey, for example, went from being the epitome of Islamic supremacy and jihad — the Ottoman scourge of Christian Europe for five centuries — to patterning itself after Europe in all ways, including by forfeiting the Arabic script and adopting the Roman alphabet, thereby becoming perhaps the most Westernized/secularized “Muslim” nation by the mid-1900s.

Today, however, as Western peoples willingly capitulate to Islamic mores in the name of tolerance, multiculturalism, political correctness, or just plain cowardice, Muslims are becoming more emboldened, making more demands and threats, as they realize they need not militarily defeat the West in order to resuscitate their supremacist birthright. (More appeasement from the bullied always brings about more demands from the bully.)

Two Tiers of Justice

Consider Muslim behavior where it is dominant and needs no pretense. There, non-Muslim minorities are habitually treated as inferiors. Earlier this year, for instance, Muslim murderers of a Coptic Christian were spared the death penalty, though that certainly would not have been the case had they been Christian and their victim Muslim. But unlike the many Western appeasers who willingly accept a subservient role to Islam, these religious minorities have no choice in the matter.

Enter the “How Dare You?” reaction, which I first described in a 2013 article.

During one Christmas season in Pakistan, as Christian children were singing carols inside their church, Muslim men from a nearby mosque barged in with an ax, beat the children, and destroyed the altar and furniture. Their justification for such violence? “You are disturbing our prayers. How dare you use the mike and speakers?”

Similarly, when a Muslim slapped a Christian and the latter reciprocated, the Muslim exclaimed “How dare a Christian slap me?!” Mass anti-Christian violence immediately ensued.

Remember the “How Dare You?” phenomenon next time you hear that Muslim madness and mayhem are the byproducts of grievance. Missing from this rationale is the supremacist nature of these grievances.

Airing the Conditions

The Conditions of Omar, a foundational Muslim text dealing with how subjugated “infidels” must behave, spells out their inferiority to Muslims. Among other stipulations, it commands conquered Christians not to raise their “voices during prayer or readings in churches anywhere near Muslims” (hence the ax attack in Pakistan). It also commands them not to display any signs of Christianity — specifically Bibles and crosses— and not to build churches or criticize the prophet.

If the supremacist nature of Islamic law is still not clear enough, the Conditions literally command Christians to give up their seats to Muslims as a show of respect.

But were such grievances legitimate? Should they have been accommodated?

Likewise, are the endless “grievances” of Muslims legitimate and should they be accommodated? These are the questions missing from the debate about easily bruised Muslim sensitivities.

One can go on and on with examples from all around the Islamic world. In my monthly “Muslim Persecution of Christians” series, which dates back to July 2011, every month features a dozen or so stories of Muslims persecuting and terrorizing Christians because the latter somehow offended Muslim sensibilities by overstepping their sharia-designated “inferior” status and daring to be on a par with Muslims.

And it is from here that one can at last begin to understand the ultimate Muslim grievance: Israel.

Israel Is the Worst

For if “infidel” Christian minorities are deemed inferior and attacked by aggrieved Muslims for exercising their basic human rights, such as freedom of worship, how must Muslims feel about Jews — who are the descendants of pigs and apes, according to the Koran — exercising power and authority over, and even killing, Muslims in what is perceived to be Muslim land?

How dare they?!

This is why few Muslims seemed to lament the half million Muslim lives lost during the Iran-Iraq war. When fellow (if nominal) Muslims are killing Muslims, that is unfortunate, yes, but not enough to deeply aggrieve Muslim sensibilities. But when it is the filthy infidel — the sons of apes and swine whose proper place is beneath the Muslim foot — wild paroxysms must by necessity ensue.

Put differently, if grievances against Israel were really about justice and displaced Palestinians, both Muslims and their Western enablers would be aggrieved by and regularly denouncing the fact that millions of Christians have been and continue to be displaced by Muslim invaders, who in 2023 alone butchered nearly 5,000 Christians for “faith-related reasons.”

Needless to say, they are not.

So the next time you hear that Muslim rage and terrorism are products of grievances, remember that this is absolutely true. However, these “grievances” are not predicated on any universal human standards of equality or justice, but rather a supremacist worldview.