The Achilles' Heel of the West

Achilles was invincible, so the story goes. He was strong and lightning fast, and in every battle he was undefeatable. But when he was shot with an arrow through the back of his heel, he was momentarily disabled, and that gave his enemies enough time to finish him off.

The West seems invincible too. We have superior technology and war-making know-how. We seem undefeatable. But we have a weakness. It is known in North America as "white guilt." In Europe it's called "post-colonial guilt."

But this guilt is founded on a mistake we should all easily see. The mistake is a simple overgeneralization (the enemy of us all). If we looked at it from another angle, most of us could clearly recognize the error.

If someone said, "All Muslims should die because of what they did to us on 9/11," almost everyone could see something wrong with the statement. Not all Muslims were involved in bringing down the Twin Towers. Some Muslims hadn't even been born yet. So it would be a moral wrong to punish all Muslims for what some Muslims did.

Let's look at it from another angle. Let's say an African-American kills a European-American in a robbery. Should all African-Americans be punished for this? Should all African-Americans even feel guilty about it? No, absolutely not. Just because someone is a member of your race or religion does not mean you are responsible for what they do. They are individual human beings, and they choose their own destiny. All African-Americans should not be held responsible for what any individual African-American does.

We can easily see this. And yet what is white guilt?

For a "white" person, it says "because some people in the past lacked the same amount of skin pigment as you, and because they did some terrible things to people of dissimilar pigmentation (Native Americans or Africans, for example), then you should feel guilty about it, and feel responsible for it, and people your level of pigmentation should do something to make amends for it." Nobody says this explicitly, but it is an unspoken basic assumption in the hearts of a large percentage of people of European descent. It is a presupposition so widespread, it is almost never even spoken aloud, and yet it underlies much of what is spoken and done.

This guilt is a major weakness, and orthodox Muslims are aggressively exploiting it.

As long as we are paralyzed by this arrow through our heel, orthodox Muslims have the upper hand. We are vulnerable.

Many of us have familiarized ourselves with Islamic doctrine, and we seek to educate our fellow non-Muslims about the information, and we seek to propose solutions to the problem, but we are often labeled as "racists." It is an oxymoron. It doesn't make any sense. It's crazy. But it is effectively making many people in prominent places — politicians and news commentators, for example — back off from saying anything honest about Islam.

Very few people have examined the guilt clearly enough to recognize the unarticulated, mistaken assumption it is based on, so a public charge of racism can be devastating to a person's career. A sizable portion of the population is motivated to bend over backwards for Muslims because of an undiscerning guilt — a guilt that stems from a feeling that "we" have harmed people of other religions and races and that we can (and should) make it up to the "oppressed" and "downtrodden" underdogs of the world.

I heard a 19 year-old freshman in college talking the other day about his class in early American history. He was upset about all the terrible things "we" did to the Native Americans. He clearly felt appalled and guilty about it.

I asked him, "Have you ever done anything bad to a Native American?"

"No," he said, "but white people did."

"Are you somehow responsible for what other white people did?" I asked. He seemed confused. He had completely accepted the point of view of his teacher and textbook (it's the standard position of many teachers and textbook authors that "we" should feel guilty for what "we" did).

I asked him, "If you were transported back to those times, would you have done anything bad to the Native Americans?"

He said, "I don't think so."

I said, "Were any of your ancestors living in America at that time?"

"I don't know."

"So let me get this straight," I said, because I can't seem to leave well enough alone sometimes, "your ancestors may have still been living in Europe and had nothing to do with what other Europeans were doing to the Native Americans, and even if they were living in America at the time, you really are not responsible for what your great, great, great grandparents did anyway, are you? And yet here you are feeling guilty for something you would never do and have never done, and maybe even your ancestors never did it? Your ancestors might have even been working on the other side of that issue for all you know, trying to free slaves or fight for the rights of Native Americans! Doesn't that seem kind of crazy?"

People accept this point of view — this white guilt or post-colonial guilt — and they teach their children the same guilt. And it has consequences. When the Muslim Students Association wants to create their own prayer room just for Muslims on a college campus, they make their appeal to administrators who have a deep-seated, well-ingrained white guilt, and these Muslims know the administrators have this guilt, and they press on that sore spot. It usually doesn't take much before the administrators acquiesce. And a little Muslim enclave has just been created. A little piece of Sharia law has been implemented (every concession to Islam is an incremental establishment of Sharia law). And as time goes on, the concession becomes accepted as permanently established because it has "always been there."

Muslims are getting away with this sort of thing all over the free world. In this gradual way, Western culture is giving way to Islamic culture. Islam is a ratchet.

What causes Western culture to give way? The main culprit is white guilt. If a student had come in and said, "We are Scientologists and we want our own prayer room," the administrator would have chuckled and wondered how someone could be so stupid as to think they could demand such a thing on a college campus!

Why the different response? White guilt does not apply to Scientology. Or Catholicism. Or Protestantism.

Everywhere orthodox Muslims are pressing for concessions — concessions they would not get if they were Catholics or Scientologists — the white guilt blinders need to be removed so the request can be seen for what it is, and those special privileges and special considerations can then be refused in exactly the same way all the others would be refused, and with no guilt.

"We" don't owe anybody anything because of what "our" ancestors may have done. We are all here now. Let's move forward. When you're talking to your friends, keep your ears tuned to white guilt. You will often hear it as a presupposition in what they say. Point it out when you hear it. Shine some light on it. Ask them if they feel guilty. Ask them if they feel responsible for what other Americans or Europeans or Caucasians have done in the past. And make it clear to them that this is the same mistake — this is the identical mistake — that racists make when they say some derisive comment about a race.

Your friend's guilt arises from an overgeneralization. The more people who understand this, the more often orthodox Muslims will be thwarted in their efforts to gain concessions. Right now the free world is yielding to Muslim pressure. Let's put a stop to it every place we can.

Citizen Warrior is the author of the book, Getting Through: How to Talk to Non-Muslims About the Disturbing Nature of Islam and also writes for Inquiry Into Islam, History is Fascinating, and Foundation for Coexistence. Subscribe to Citizen Warrior updates here. You can send an email to CW here.