The only thing he doesn’t blame: Islam.
Via Campus Reform:
In a pair of recent interviews, University of London professor Gilbert Achcar placed the blame for the terrorist attacks in Paris squarely at the feet of the United States, France, and the Western world.
Achcar, who has given lectures at the University of Denver and University of California, Berkeley, emphasized the need to “put all this in context” in interviews with Democracy Now.
“All these appalling features come from somewhere. And this somewhere is, before everything, the action of the West, the responsibility of the West, and also the responsibility of the West and the United States,” Achcar said on Jan. 8. […]
Achcar, who teaches development studies and international relations at the University of London, points to the United States’ invasion of Iraq as an example of a major barbarism.
“What you had in Iraq is that the barbarism that—represented by the U.S. occupation of that country…bred a counter-barbarism represented by al-Qaeda.”
“This kind of actions [sic] by the United States in invading other countries and, of course, acting as an occupying force, with all what this means, leads, of course, to such extremism on the other side, as we have seen,” Achcar said.
However, the United States is not the only country Achcar blames for tragic attack on the Charlie Hebdo magazine in Paris. France’s treatment of its immigrants, Achcar said, bears responsibility as well.
“The communities of migrant background, especially when they come from Muslim-majority countries, are subject to forms of racism and various forms of discrimination and oppression, which are the breeding ground for the kind of hatred in response to that societal hatred that I just mentioned,” Achcar said. “And so, it’s not—I mean, it’s not surprising, in this way.”