Navigating Muslim Extremism Without Being Racist
We can love our Muslim brothers and still fight extremists
This is a guest post from the JPF family by Jeffrey Kass, author of Black Batwoman v. White Jesus: and other essays from the anti-racism collection.
All future stories written by Reuben Salsa (every Thursday, 9 am Auckland time) will be for paid subscribers only. Guest posts will remain free and posted every Sunday (9 am Auckland time).
Pay for a subscription today! Guaranteed weirdness!
Navigating Muslim Extremism Without Being Racist
We’d be lying to ourselves if we didn’t acknowledge that Islamic extremism is a danger to the entire world.
On the African continent, things have gotten pretty severe.
Groups including Mali-based Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen, Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, and Islamic State in the West African Province have launched attacks on multiple government forces and murdered numerous civilians.
Boko Haram in Nigeria kidnapped young girls, raping some. The group bombed a U.N. headquarters and launched terror attacks in Chad and Nigeria. All in the name of some God I don’t recognize.
Numerous African civilians have died because of Jihad terrorism.
The extremist group Al-Shabaab bombed the crowded Bakaara Market in Somalia. Other Al-Shabaab terrorists set off a car bomb in front of a hotel. On August 2, 2024, a suicide bomber detonated an explosive on Lido Beach near the Beach View Hotel in Somalia. After the bombing, Al-Shabaab militants stormed the hotel and started shooting, killing 44 people.
Other ISIS terrorists killed 25 in Mozambique.
ISIS extremists ambushed Nigerian soldiers, killing over 30 of them in an attack. At least three bomb blasts targeted several areas in Nigeria killing thirty-two people and injuring forty-eight others.
On August 24, 2024, extremist jihadists massacred nearly 200 people in the town of Barsalogho in the West African nation of Burkina Faso. Over 100 terrorists on motorcycles opened fire with automatic weapons, killing men, women, and children. The Al-Qaeda-linked group responsible has already captured large areas of territory in the country.
Islamic extremists have been busy elsewhere around the globe.
Just this year, ISIS suicide bombers killed over 100 people in Iran and shot up a church in Turkey.
ISIS terrorists killed over 30 and injured 40 in a bombing in Pakistan. Multiple suicide bombers killed dozens in several attacks in Afghanistan.
An Islamic extremist stabbed bystanders in Malaysia. Gunmen opened fire on a vehicle carrying foreign tourists from Spain, Norway, Lithuania, and Australia, alongside their Afghan guides in Central Afghanistan.
A group of gunmen from the Islamic extremist group Lashkar-e-Taiba ambushed a passenger bus carrying Hindu pilgrims, causing it to crash into a ravine, killing 9 and injuring 41.
Christian Orthodox Churches and synagogues were bombed by Islamic State terrorists in Russia, killing 27 and injuring 45.
In Yemen, Houthi terrorists have launched numerous attacks on Yemeni civilians.
Iran has jailed women who dare uncover their hair and imprisoned and killed numerous people who so much as question the government. On top of mass funding some of the most violent terrorists in the world.
In Afghanistan, extremists have even outlawed education for women.
And of course, we’re all aware of the horrific massacres Hamas perpetrated on October 7.
Whether it’s the 9–11 bombing of the Twin Towers and the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in the U.S., all too frequent attacks in the U.K. or France, or the too many to mention assaults across the world, Islamic extremism is a major problem and we can’t continue to ignore it or think it’s mere protesting when so-called protestors call for “Death to America” while sporting terrorist Hamas headbands or waving a Hezbollah flag.
As overwhelming as it sounds, though, here’s some little-known fact about all of it.
The overwhelming majority of extremist and violent terrorist incidents occur in largely Muslim states. Almost all of these incidents are perpetrated by a small minority of so-called Muslims seeking power primarily in their own areas of operation and whose primary victims are fellow Muslims.
In other words, the people who suffer the most from Islamic extremism are other Muslims. Indeed, some 85% of Islamic extremist attacks take place in Muslim countries.
Islamic terror groups have murdered hundreds of thousands of Muslims over the past 20 years.
That’s why Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Oman and many other Arab and non-Arab Muslim countries have outlawed extremist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and are working around the clock to stop it.
Just in 2024, the UAE sentenced 43 Islamic extremists to life in prison for their pre-terror activities. Egypt regularly arrests extremists plotting events and has even bombed ISIS targets in the Sinai desert.
Saudi Arabia for years launched military strikes on Houthi terrorists in Yemen.
We in the U.S. shouldn’t be afraid to call out this extremism, especially when prominent Muslims themselves are fighting it.
Let’s not be the useful idiots of Iran and pretend Hamas and ISIS are just seeking a more peaceful, just world.
With all of this, it’s also critically important to know and fully digest that the overwhelming majority of Muslims worldwide aren’t terrorists despite what your Instagram echo chamber might be telling you.
There are over 1 billion Muslims.
Thousands of members in Syria and Iraq are in extremist groups. Members in Islamic extremist groups number in the thousands in various African countries. Hezbollah, the largest of these non-nation terror groups, has 100,000 members in Lebanon, a nation of 5.5 million Arabs.
Hamas had tens of thousands of members among the over 2 million Palestinians in Gaza.
Boko Haram has around 15,000 members. Al-Shabaab has another 13,000 or so members.
We know there are cells of hundreds of Islamic extremist terrorists throughout Europe. In France. Belgium. Germany. England.
But what this also means is that there are well over 900,000,000 Muslims not engaged in terror.
It doesn’t mean we should pretend Islamic extremism isn’t a problem, but it’s also clear that we ought to be careful not to blame or lump all into one group. Or fear Muslims. Like a recent U.S. president tried to convince us to do.
There are lessons in these critical facts for people on both sides of the political aisle.
To some of my friends on the left, stop sweeping this extremism under the rug in the name of political correctness. Stop pretending that people waving terrorist flags are just having 1960s-style Make Love Not War peace rallies. Calling for death to America isn’t something we ought to take lightly. And stop letting Iran get money.
We ought not to care what ethnicity or background anyone is if they espouse violence or destruction of anyone.
To my conservative friends, there’s not some group called “Muslims” that’s the problem. It’s just extremists. When you label everyone as if they’re all the same, you put millions of good people at risk. When you proclaim that peace isn’t possible with Muslims, you end up with policies that aren’t just. We end up punishing millions of innocent people.
I’m blessed to have many Muslim friends. People from Saudi Arabia, Israel, Pakistan, UAE, Jordan, Palestine, Sudan, Egypt and Morocco. I’ve been to Saudi Arabia. To Jordan and Morocco. To Egypt twice. To Palestinian cities. And to Israel many times.
On one recent trip to Cairo, I went to visit an old synagogue the government of Egypt is restoring. The site had been a synagogue since the 10th century. It was closed off the day I went as a Muslim man who didn’t speak a word of English was busy working on repairs inside.
He saw me viewing the outside and came out to greet me. With my basic level of Arabic, we exchanged pleasantries.
He motioned for me to hand him my iPhone and returned inside to take photographs for me since I wasn’t allowed in an active construction site. When he handed my camera back to me, he again motioned for me, this time to follow him down some alleys.
Alone with this Arab construction worker, he walked me through various twists and turns down alleyways and then arrived at a door to an old building. He opened the door with a key and directed me to go inside.
It was another synagogue I had never heard of. It wasn’t on Google Maps. I walked inside and saw the entire building had clearly been bombed some decades prior. Most of the wood planks were scattered across the one-room synagogue.
But at the very front of the room was the place where Jews keep their Torahs. Known in English as the Ark. It was the only part of the synagogue that was fully intact, still with its original artwork painted on the front.
He smiled as I thanked him in Arabic:
“Shukran Achi.”
Thank you, brother.
He hugged me as he locked it back up and we went on our separate ways.
I can say with confidence that the people of these Muslim countries weren’t out to get me.
They embraced me, as a Jewish man, with open arms. Repeatedly and pervasively.
So, let’s recap.
The overwhelming majority of extremist and violent terrorist incidents occur in largely Muslim states. Almost all of these incidents are perpetrated by a minority of so-called Muslims seeking power primarily in their own areas of operation and whose primary victims are fellow Muslims.
Many Muslim governments of the countries involved are actively fighting extremism and terrorism, and most are allies of the U.S. that work closely with the security, military, and counterterrorism forces of non-Muslim states to fight extremism and terrorism.
The vast majority of Muslims aren’t terrorists and oppose violent extremism and terrorism.
We should all loudly and unequivocally oppose violent Islamic extremism and love the rest of the 900,000,000 Muslims.
For more articles by Jewish authors, subscribe to the JPF on Medium (click on the image below).
Substacks to follow:
ForeignLocal by Al Ballesteros
The Zionist Voice by
The Liberal Jew by
Rocking the Suburbs by
Yes, the vast majority of Muslims are not violent extremists. You missed a point though. You mentioned that there are over 1 billion Muslims. Toward the end of your article you mention the 900 million who aren't extremist. By my calculations, that leaves 100 million potential extremists. Numerically, there aren't a lot of Muslims actually engaged in actual violence but they have a deep pool to draw upon and a large reservoir of supporters. I'd like to see a lot more rejection of this violence by Muslims in general. Not just a general rejection but a naming of names. I'd like to see the Muslim equivalent of excommunication by the imans. No safe harbors. Rejection of the calls to jihad. Root out the bad guys within the mosques. Muslims need to start taking this course amongst themselves. I want to see massive protests by the Muslim world against these terrorist groups. Shut down the money networks that fund them. Until I see that happening I'll find it hard to distinguish between the terrorist and the peaceful.
Noted. Thanks for the perspective. #notallmuslims. Otoh, I relate to the sentiments of ZeroGravitas33 and FreedomFighter. I would have a higher opinion of Islam if the peaceful 90% were speaking out against the violent, or potentially violent, 10%.