Shakir, Al-Gharbi Downplay ISIS's Atrocities with Comparison to Mexican Cartels

Zaid Shakir

Imam Zaid Shakir--a co-founder of Berkeley's Zaytuna College known for conspiratorial, anti-Western, Islamist rhetoric--delivered the keynote speech at this week's Sydney Muslim Conference in Australia, where he compared ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) to Mexican drug cartels, claiming that, "the crimes of the drug lords made Islamic State actions 'pale in significance.'" As he put it:

ISIS has beheaded a handful of journalists. Mexican drug cartels have killed 57 in the same period . . . there is a very virulent ideology that has a vested interest in making sure we know everything about the crimes of ISIS.

He then blamed the radicalization of Muslim youth in the West--a number of whom have either joined ISIS abroad or acted alone on its behalf in their own countries--not on the appeal of ISIS's Islamic supremacist ideology, but on "a self-fulfilling prophecy," maintaining that:

This idea that Muslims are inherently violent and prone to terrorism anticipates there is going to be a Muslim radicalisation problem.

Shakir was likely taking a page from University of Arizona instructor Musa al-Gharbi, who, in addition to labeling the U.S. a "a greater threat to peace and stability in the region than ISIS," penned an Al-Jazeera op-ed in October on the Mexican cartel/ISIS juxtaposition. After asking, "Are Americans primarily concerned with ISIL's specific atrocities or with the fact that it is Muslims who are committing these crimes?," al-Gharbi concluded:

[T]he US public is far too busy disparaging Islam, while its military kills Arabs and Muslims abroad. What is fueling the disproportionate reaction to ISIL is Islamophobia, not any empirical realities.

While Mexican drug cartels are brutal and violent, that's not really al-Gharbi or Shakir's point. Rather, it is a distraction intended to cast the limited U.S. military campaign against ISIS, and the American public's concern over ISIS's atrocities, as nothing more than "Islamophobia."

And, finally, consider the messenger.