Why Do You Kill Zaid?

By Jürgen Todenhöfer

This advertorial was published in The New York Times by author Jürgen Todenhöfer, based on his book 'Why Do You Kill Zaid?'

The West is much more violent than the Muslim world. Millions of Arab civilians have been killed since colonialism began.

.....Over the past 200 years no Muslim state has ever attacked the West. The European superpowers and the United States have always been the aggressors and not those under attack. Since the beginning of the colonial era millions of Arab civilians have been killed.

The West is clearly at the top of the league when it comes to killing, by a ratio of more than ten to one.

The current debate about the Muslim world's alleged propensity to violence is a mockery of historical facts. The West was and is much more violent than the Muslim world. The problem of our era is not the violence of Muslims but the violence of some Western countries.

To understand Muslim extremism, one has to try to see the world, at least for a moment, from the point of view of a Muslim. Our horizon is not the end of the world. A young Muslim who follows the news on television sees day after day how Muslim women, children and men are killed by Western weapons, Western allies and Western soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon, Somalia and elsewhere......

Terrorism is not a Muslim problem but a global one.....In the current debate on terrorism it is often said: "Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims." That is simply wrong.....The Muslim world is a far cry from the image depicted in the Western media.....

Nothing fosters terrorism more than the West's "war on terror"...

.....The objective must be a world order that all states can accept as just; a world in which there is no longer discrimination against Muslims in the West and against Jews and Christians in the Muslim world; a world that no longer conducts mutual demonization of religions and cultures; a world order which decommissions the West's weapons of mass destruction and shuts down its lie machines. A world in which the U.S. is again a symbol of peace and freedom, rather than of war and repression. A world in which everyone sees the log in his own eye and not only the speck in the eye of his neighbor.



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About the author

Dr. Jürgen Todenhöfer (67) has been an executive at a major European media group for more than 20 years. Before that he was a member of the German parliament for 18 years and spokesman for the CDU/CSU on development and arms control.

He has written two bestsellers about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. With the proceeds he established a children's home in Afghanistan and is building a children's clinic in Congo. With the royalties from "Why do you kill, Zaid?" Todenhöfer will finance medical aid for Iraqi refugee children (IOM) and an Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation project in the Middle East (MEET).