Hamid Dabashi writes: Murderous criminals commit acts of systemic violence targeting innocent people, and their kindred souls among the proto-Nazi Islamophobes pick up where their brethren have left off to perpetuate a cycle of violence.

Innocent people from Brussels to Beirut, from Paris to Istanbul, from Baghdad to San Bernardino, and around the world are then caught in between this vicious circle.

What is needed is a conceptual puncture and a categorical breakage to this vicious cycle. The slaughter of innocent people in Brussels is the extension of the slaughter of the innocent in the Islamic world, not in response to or revenge for it.

When the criminal thugs gather around ISIL’s banner and commit atrocities around the world, they present it as acts of revenge against “Western aggression”. These are not acts of revenge and retaliation. These are identical acts of murderous violence targeting identically innocent people in different sites.

The murderous outfit that calls itself ISIL is the crooked product, the diabolic extension and the ugly shadow of precisely what it is they say they are fighting. [Continue reading…]