by WorldTribune Staff, May 25, 2017

Hamid Jan Kakar has run out of patience with politically correct defenses of Islam in the aftermath of the Manchester bombing.

Kakar, in an interview with Independent Journal Review, said he is sick of people saying “terrorism doesn’t have anything to do with Islam.”

The defenders of Islam must “recognize the fact” that terrorists “are followers of Islam,” said a 29-year-old Afghanistan native who now lives in London.

“Europe had an Enlightenment era, and Europe has never looked back,” Kakar said. “But Islam has never had an Enlightenment era. It needs one.”

Kakar called out fellow Muslims for defending Islam as a “religion of peace.”

“As much as it upsets me that 22 innocent people were killed in Manchester, in Afghanistan people are killed every single day. Muslims always indirectly or directly defend Islam as a religion of peace. The Koran is in Old Arabic, so nobody fully understands it. If Muslims knew the Koran, why are there 72 different sects and sub-sects of Islam?”

Kakar lived under the Taliban until he was five. He said he still visits Afghanistan from time to time, and his relatives deal with terrorism every day.

“Even though I was only five, living under the Taliban is something I will always remember. They turned sports stadiums into slaughterhouses. Pregnant women were dying during delivery because there were no nurses or doctors to look after them and provide the adequate medical care. The only education you could get was about the history of Islam, and it was a fabricated history,” Kakar said.

Muslims must first acknowledge the problem before they can address it, Kakar said.

“Muslims don’t want to talk about it because they feel like they are betraying their religion. So they say things like ‘but Hitler killed people and the KKK killed people.’ This creates a distraction and doesn’t focus on the real problem.

“It’s about time that Muslims speak up. We need to acknowledge it and completely denounce the jihad.”

Kakar also rebutted a popular argument by the defenders of Islam – that the West is the cause of all the violence in the Middle East. “People say these things just started when the Jews occupied Israel and the Americans began to invade Middle Eastern lands. But at the beginning of Islam, after Mohammad died, there were four leaders. Only one of them died his own death.

“But Ali [Mohammad’s son-in-law] was killed by fellow Muslims when he was reciting the Koran in a mosque,” Kakar continued. “Muslims killed his sons. Muslims have been fighting each other for an extended period, much longer than U.S. troops have been fighting in the Middle East or the state of Israel has been around.

  Afghan native blasts Islam defenders in aftermath of Manchester massacre, Hamid Jan Kakar, Islamic terrorism, Manchester terror attack, WorldTribune.com