Juan Cole
12/16/2025

The disdain for mindless violence exhibited by most of the world’s 2 billion Muslims is exemplified by Ahmed al-Ahmed. He interrupted the negative stereotypes of Muslims so powerfully that white nationalists spread false allegations that he was actually a British IT specialist with a Christian name. Others attempted to maintain that he was a Christian Lebanese, which his name makes impossible. The New York Times declined to mention his religion. That there should have been a Muslim Schindler, a hero who followed the toleration promoted by the Prophet Muhammad, was so insupportable to Islamophobes that they felt constrained to make up fantasies and obscure reality.

The Gaza genocide weighs heavily over the Bondi Beach attacks, but it shouldn’t. ISIL shot up Paris in 2015 before the recent Gaza conflict, and massacred Shiite cadets in Iraq.