‘Jihadi Johns’ are your fault, not ours


So, the news media has a new supervillain. His name is Jihadi John. In a video uploaded on YouTube last week, James Foley, an American photojournalist who was covering the Syrian Civil War when he was abducted on Nov. 22, 2012 in northwestern Syria, was beheaded by a masked man with a London accent.He is the latest toy of the Western story makers. Well, it's not clear who he is yet but he deserves a cool nickname. Several experts say the video of the murder was a sham while many agree that it was staged and edited, but the manhunt has already begun. While authorities are trying to identify the masked man, the executer or the performer of the execution of James Foley, some are 100 percent sure he was a rapper in London, Abdel-Majed Abdel Bary who performed under the name L Jinny. They are currently publishing the story of the shocking transformation of a "rising star" to a brutal terrorist. They don't even stop for a second to ask themselves what might have happened to that man and what caused his slide.Meanwhile, the reports linking Turkey with ISIS is increasing in parallel with the "Jihadi John." The footage is gruesome. Regardless of that, it was obviously broadcast in a propaganda coup for ISIS, or there is the possibility of a sham, but the increasing number of news reports alleging that Turkey is a hub for terrorists is contradictory to reality.The masked ISIS militant is just one of the roughly 500 British citizens who left the U.K. to fight in Iraq and Syria. There are over 2,000 Europeans who have descended on the area to join ISIS. Turkey has blocked over 6,000 Europeans going through the border to join the militants and has deported over 1,000. While Turkey is doing its best, the countries of origin do nothing and expect Turkey to be the absolute barrier. The intelligence services in Europe call Turkey and inform the country about the potential ISIS militants sometimes right after their planes leave the ground or generally days after they land in Turkey. What kind of a security concern makes European authorities push the militants into Turkey? Don't they want to deal with them? Well, who wants to? But if European countries are serious about stopping people from joining ISIS and preventing them from coming back to Europe at some point, they should stop pushing them on to Turkey and start cooperating with the Turkish government, which is their best and only option.While Western countries do nothing, Syria is no different. We all see that the Syrian-child butcher, Bashar Assad, has not been fighting against ISIS mainly because ISIS is the ruthless murderer Assad needs in order to kill the Syrian fighters who are still determined to overthrow him.Meanwhile, experts say that around 100 U.S. citizens have joined the fight in Iraq and Syria in contrast with the EU. Think why. One of the main reasons behind this is that American Muslims are more integrated into society than European Muslims since they are not isolated in the U.S. as they are in Europe. This is because Islamophobia is on the rise in Europe much more than in the U.S. Surveys show that Islamophobia is Europe's new political disease after anti-semitism. The attitudes towards Muslims are substantially more negative than those against Jews across Europe over the last 10 years. You know what they did to Jews, imagine what they can do to Muslims. The experts say anti-Muslim opinion in Western Europe was most prevalent among those with less education and those who identified their political views with the right, which is also on the rise throughout the EU. In short, the solution to the problem is not in sticking to your own values but in accepting others'.