Islamophobes claim that “most Muslims are stuck in the Dark Ages.” Even if they’re right, wouldn’t it be instructive to ask why? So, who’s been subsidizing their wholesale oppression in North Africa, Southeast, Central and West Asia in order to rob their rich natural resources? We have. Who’s been targeting them since 9-11 extra-judicially, domestically and internationally? We have. Who’s been terrorizing civilian Muslims far out of proportion to the few extremists who’ve been terrorizing our civilians (this shouldn’t be construed as an attempt to minimize the unrepresentative extremists’ terrorist crimes, since the loss of even one life is a big deal)? We have. Who bloodthirstily recruited, armed, trained and financed the most fanatical jihadist killers during the 1980s to drive the Russians out of Afghanistan? The CIA and its chosen clients. Who’s been villifying and demonizing Muslims in a cultural context in order to concoct and embellish enemy images for the purpose of kleptocratically feeding America’s permanent, overly blotted war machine, with devastating consequences for the South? Our “progressive” media, “liberal” scholarship and entertainment industries, initially aided by vulgar propagandists like Bernard Lewis and later Samuel Huntington and Francis Fukuyama. Conclusion: we’re living in the Dark Ages at least as much as “most Muslims” might be, given the shocking barbarities that we carry out in the name of freedom, human rights and democracy, while deluding ourselves with all kinds of self-serving myths to rationalize our shameless imperialistic exploits. Western cultural racism and world-class hypocrisy are never in short supply