The latest Muslim rationalization for the 1,400-year-old war between Islam and all that is non-Islamic is the so-called “occupation” of Muslim countries; as well as the military actions (including drone attacks) carried out by Western states in Muslim countries.

Take Asghar Bukhari (a British Pakistani) of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPACUK). He has justified just about every act of Islamic violence and terrorism (including the slaughter of Lee Rigby) in terms of the “occupations” of what he calls “Muslim lands”. More precisely, Bukhari has said that “Muslims who fight the occupation of their lands are Mujahadeen and are blessed by Allah”.

Most of the time that Muslims (as well as Western Leftists) say this kind of thing they have in mind Iraq, Afghanistan and Israel. That's strange really because most British soldiers withdrew from Iraq in 2009 (the few remaining left in 2011) and the Americans did the same in 2011. And since then, there has been a Shiite-dominated government in Iraq.

In terms of Iraq, the West is (retrospectively) held accountable for all that's still happening in that country -- some three years after the last Western (American) troops pulled out. That blame-game is no surprise: Muslims are still talking about the Balfour Declaration of 1917.

Added to all that, many (positive/inverted) racists of the Left deem Iraqi Muslims (as they do all Muslims) to be children: i.e., beings without free will and who are effectively also without conscience. Consequently, all that Islamic/Muslim violence in Iraq (as well as elsewhere in the Muslim world) simply must be someone else's fault -- ours!

Both American and British troops are still of course in Afghanistan. Yet even in this case Barack Obama has planned to withdraw all American troop from Afghanistan by 2016.

There are roughly 34,000 US troops still left in Afghanistan. Despite that, there are vast swathes of the country in which there are no Western soldiers at all. Of course 34,000 soldiers can still do much damage. Nonetheless, what's happening in Afghanistan can hardly be called a Western “occupation”.

All that simply won't matter because many Muslims will simply refocus on other issues: say Israel or possibly the infidel “occupation” of both India and southern Spain (or Andalusia, as Muslims call it).

In terms of civilian causalities, Afghanistan has been a remarkably unbloody war.

In the period 2001 to 2012, between 18,000 and 20,000 civilians were killed in the conflict. That is not the number of civilians killed by Western troops: simply the number killed. In other words, most of those civilians would have been killed by fellow Muslims (mainly, but not exclusively, by the Taliban). Sure, as the saying goes, “every death is a tragedy”; yet compared to other conflicts or wars, that death-toll is fairly low.

Compare Afghanistan to the Sudanese Islamic campaigns (roughly between 1991 and 2005) against Sudanese Christians and animists. As a result of these campaigns over one-and-a-half million people were killed; over two million people died due to the resultant starvation (caused by the conflict); and over four million people were displaced. In addition, Sudanese Muslims captured over 200,000 Southern Sudanese and Nuba slaves. (All done, it must be said, in full concordance with both the Koran and Islam generally.)

Let's also compare Afghanistan to Asghar Bukhari's very own Pakistan (its direct neighbor) in roughly the same period.

There are no “occupying”' American troops in Pakistan; though there were some 370 drone attacks, between 2005 and 2013, in parts of the country.

Now between September 2001 and May 2011, 35,000 Pakistanis were killed due to Islamic terrorism alone. That's 15,000 more than the 20,000 (max) civilian deaths (most of whom were killed by fellow Muslims) in Afghanistan; though in a shorter period.

Drone Attacks: Pakistan, Yemen & Somalia

Asghar Bukhari, or another writer for MPAC, states that drone attacks “kill more women, children and civilians than anyone else”. Now that is either an outright lie or Bukhari is simply drunk on his own rhetorical “narrative” (a word he often uses) of Muslim victimhood.

From 2005 to 2013, between 258 and 307 civilians were killed as a result of drone attacks in Pakistan. Those same drone attacks, on the other hand, managed to kill between 1,623 and 2,787 Islamic militants. (Details found here.)

The other two states which have been the recipients of drone attacks are Yemen and Somalia.

Between 2002 and 2014, there were 96 drone attacks in Yemen. These attacks resulted in 105 civilian deaths, compared to the 472 Islamic militants who were also killed. In the same period, al-Qaeda alone (discarding other Islamic groups) killed the same number (105) of Yemeni civilians.

As for Somalia, from 2007 to 2014 there were between 5 and 8 drone attacks in that country in which between 0 and 1 civilians died. The total deaths in this period were between 10 and 24.

In comparison, more Muslims die each month in Pakistan at the hands of Islamic terrorists or “militants” (or, indeed, “freedom fighters”) than have died in the entire 2002-1014 period of US drone attacks in Yemen. When it comes to drone attacks in Pakistan itself, it can be said that more Pakistanis have died every few months as a result of Islamic terrorism than in the entire period of of drone attacks (2004-2014) on that country.

Asghar Bukhari's Narrative of Muslim Victimhood

Asghar Bukhari's (or MPAC's) position (as shown on its website) is that all this Muslim violence has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Islam:

“The well worn narrative is that media commentators, the self described experts on terrorism and Islam alike, will find the roots of violence in Islam and the Quran itself…. there isn’t a single one of us who hasn’t groaned when we see Islamic texts being purposefully twisted and misrepresented to arrive at the above conclusions.”

After that we can cite a laughable quasi-Marxist analysis of all Muslim violence (as found on its Facebook page); all of which faithfully concurs with what Leftist/Marxist groups say on these issues:

“Muslims are the most oppressed people on earth, we have been denied our freedom, we have been denied our equality, we have been denied any justice, we have even been denied the right to tell the world our own story.”

As you can imagine, MPACUK can't exactly praise the savage murder of Lee Rigby; as well as all the other atrocities committed by Muslims in the name of Islam. Nonetheless, it can -- and it often does -- rationalize, justify, excuse and explicate them. And this is what it does here:

“.... [the killing of Lee Rigby] was an extreme reaction to an extreme situation. These people did what they did because they wanted to get a message across, a message that tells the world that they are sick of being oppressed, colonised, demonised, killed and murdered, simply for being Muslim.”

Now how does all that rhetoric tie in with Muslim sexual-grooming gangs in the UK, female genital mutilation (FGM), and, more relevantly, Muslim-on-Muslim violence? How is all that a result of Muslims being “oppressed, colonised, demonised,killed”? Do the Thai Buddhists of southern Thailand -- the victims of random jihadist violence -- fit into this quasi-Marxist package of Islam? What about the animists and Christians of Sudan in the period 1991 to 2005? Or what about the hundreds -- possibly thousands – of working-class girls who were the victims of the Muslim sexual-grooming gangs of England? What has all that to do with “Muslim oppression”?

What's happening here is painfully obvious.

Muslims cannot -- almost by definition -- blame Islam. As Muslims, they must completely deny (at least to non-Muslims) that Islam has any influence whatsoever on all this violence and sexual abuse. Muslims must do this quite simply because they are Muslims. Yes, they do indeed tart up their Muslim tribalism with Marxist, quasi-Marxist and even interfaith gobbledegook. Nonetheless, it all still remains thoroughly tribal and Islamic in nature and origin.

What's more, when Muslims claim that they've been “oppressed”, "colonised” and “demonised”, they really are taking the piss. Historically, Muslims have been the worst oppressors, colonizers and demonizers on the planet. Indeed the Islamic killing machine has been the worst killing machine the world has ever known: with, on some accounts, a grand score of over 250 million (dead) victims.