Minority Culture or a Group of Terrorists

Cong C. Vu

Multiculturalism & its critics

Final paper        

Minority culture or a group of terrorists

        In the news, we see minority groups always end up with disadvantages: minority kids do not have good education; or minority students have trouble finding jobs, etc. On a larger scale, minority groups have to assimilate into the wider ones, and at times they have to sacrifice some of their traditions in order to fit into the wider cultures. There is also a sense of internal conflict in the mind of minority individuals, for their dignity may be at risk in the wider majority cultures. These advantages may have driven them to absurd measurements to practice and spread their minority ideology and belief. They can commit even the most outrageous acts, like the recent terrorist attacks by Islamic State in Paris.

        The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or simply Islamic State is a Wahhabi/Salafi jihadist Islamic extremist militant group. It is led by and mainly composed of Sunni Arabs from Iraq and Syria. On November 13th of 2015, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant committed a series of coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris, the capital of France, and its northern suburb, Saint-Denis. The attack took away the lives of 130 people, with 368 injuries. The attacks have been the deadliest on France since World War II, and the deadliest in the European Union since the Madrid train bombing in 2004. Needless to say, the attacks in Paris attracted the attention of many international leaders, government and organizations throughout the world.

        As the ISIL is adhering to its belief in jihadist ideology, the question for liberal states is to what extent should liberal state tolerate this minority. Historically, liberals believe that tolerance involves freedom of individual conscience, not just collective worship (Kymlika 158). The degree to which ISIL respects individual right of its members to pursuit religious freedom is questionable, as little is known about the organization other than the published social media of ISIL, which mostly depicts outrageous violation of human rights. In addition, the goal of ISIL is to sough to establish itself as a caliphate, an Islamic state led by a group of religious authorities under a supreme leader, who is believed to be the successor to Prophet Muhammad. ISIL also seeks to expand its land and take over the Earth until it can spread the truth and justice of Islam all over the world. Considering the method of spreading ISIL’s ideology, we can see a pattern of abusive coercion, which may prove that ISIL has little to no concern about freedom of individual conscience. Any groups with a different religious belief would end up being an enemy of ISIL. For example, ISIL is responsible for the ethnic cleansing of ethnic and religious minority groups in Northern Iraq on a historic scale, as it killed and abducted thousands of individual and forced more than 830,000 others to free the areas that ISIL has captured since 2014. Because of the grave nature of ISIL’s violation of human rights, liberal countries need to speak out against the injustice of the illiberal minority, or in this case, ISIL. Violence will only be able to halt the movement of ISIL and increase the hostility between ISIL and the liberal nations. As Kymlika pointed out, “dismissing the idea of self-government for national minorities will not make that problem go away.” Ideally, the leaders of liberal nations may work to admit the self-government of ISIL; while making them held responsible for committing crimes on humanity.