Intolerant Leftists

Most of my friends are leftists by American definition, and I admire their commitment to equality and freedom for all people. But two of them always chastise me whenever I suggest there are threats to people in the world other than American imperialism and capitalism. Today I casually suggested that the gunmen who did the killing in Mumbai are probably Islamic terrorists, and the two immediately start criticizing me for being almost a racist.

I tried to make clear that I'm not indicating that all muslims are terrorists, and that I'm aware the muslims suffered injustice in that region and part of the problem is American foreign policy. Then I asked my two friends if they felt the crimes of these terrorists are justifiable because of the injustice they felt. My two friends avoided the question, but went on to say the US military killed no less civilians in the irag war than these terrorists. But why can't we criticize islamic extremism and US foreign policy at the same time, one does not justify the other.

These two friends are particularly angry at me for putting Islam and Terrorist in the same word, but I have muslim friends who call these gunmen the same name as they represent an extreme fraction of the religion. What's wrong with possible links between religious fundamentalism and violence? We are worried about the feelings of muslims, who are supposedly the weak and repressed. But what about the feelings of those who are repressed in muslim regimes? What about the feelings of young girls who are stoned to death for adultery who were often just victims of rapes (I knew two real cases, one under taliban regime and one in Somalia)?

In my two friends' view, people in the third world were just living a happy and peaceful life until western imperialists and capitalists came. I cannot agree with that, the people in the third world were never that innocent. You can even take Tibet for example, the peaceful and spirtual shangarila in western imagination had one of the cruelest theocracy, with previous Dalai Lamas using bowls made of virgins' skulls.

To conclude, I'm not entirely intimidated by my two friends' iron fists of political correctness, I don't want to give up thinking about any human cultures critically, whether it's capitalism or socialism, western or eastern, the powerful or the powerless...