After the horrific terrorist attacks in Ottawa and Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, against a backdrop of  Islamic State (IS or ISIS) both beheading and recruiting westerners, York University’s Ahmadiyya Muslim Student’s Association (AMSA) has launched a Stop the CrISIS campaign. Jari Quadrat, AMSA’s president, noting that a York student was killed while fighting with ISIS, said, “We’d like to end it at that, and ensure that no more Canadian youth have any thoughts of radicalization from this day onwards.”

I applaud AMSA’s move as well as Quadrat’s statement saying AMSA “wholeheartedly condemns the killings by both Martin Rouleau, 25-year old radicalized Muslim in Quebec, and Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, the 32-year-old Muslim convert in Ottawa.” But it would have been more impressive if AMSA had also condemned the killing of three-month-old Chaya Zissel Braun and 22-year-old Karen Yemima Muscara at the Jerusalem light rail station by another “radicalized Muslim” the same week. 

The acts are not disconnected. Islamism is the noxious thread here. It links these incidents spread over thousands of kilometres in Syria, Israel, and Canada to 9/11, 7/7, Hamas suicide bombings, and many other recent abominations that are part of the “CrISIS.”

Unfortunately, such boldness rarely happens on campuses today regarding Israel and Palestine. Israel has been so vilified, so caricatured, that rational conversation is rare, especially, I regret to say, in Muslim student organizations like AMSA. York, in particular, has been a hotbed of hostility toward Israel, hosting an annual week-long hate-fest making the libellous, ahistorical, invidious comparison between South Africa and Israel. Any campaign against “thoughts of radicalization” will only succeed if it tackles all radicalization, including the radicalized demonization of Israel. 

Let me be clear: I’m not proposing that Quadrat and AMSA support Israel in any way. But condemning only some radicalism, only some terrorism, only some Islamism is morally sloppy and politically inept. It risks making “Stop the CrISIS” a false and obvious damage control gesture rather than a courageous educational and ideological move to tackle a serious problem throughout the Muslim world.

Support for Palestinian terrorism and radicalism often functions as the gateway drug of the Islamist movement. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry sounded like a foolish dupe when he echoed Arab leaders’ claims blaming Israel for ISIS. But the toxic dynamics around the Israel-Palestine question, whereby wild lies are accepted as the gospel truth, hysteria trumps reason, radicalism is rationalized, the West and Israel are demonized, and terrorism is justified, all make the work of ISIS’ Islamist propagandists easier. The culture of inflammation, incitement, and rationalized (but irrational) violence directed toward Israel is contagious. It spreads and cannot be contained by distinguishing between “good” targets and “bad” targets.

Quadrat and AMSA have made an important first step in saving Islam from Islamists, in fighting the radicals that pervert their religion, hijack co-religionists, and sully their honourable faith’s reputation. But rooting out radicalism requires ideological root canal not Aspirin. It requires an honest assessment of where the toxicity comes from, how the toxicity resonates, and how one poisonous corner of Muslim political culture feeds into this broader toxic threat. 

Raising people on hatred breeds hatred, but raising people on passionate political convictions tempered by civil conflict can actually breed the kind of love, mutual respect and democratic values necessary for fighting ISIS.

There are many ways to support the Palestinian cause and condemn Israeli actions. But for too long the Palestinian national movement – and much of the Muslim and Arab worlds – have been so blinded by fury against the Jewish state that they’ve failed to see the pathological impact of such rage on their individual and collective souls. Hatred hurts the hater. I invite Jari Quadrat, AMSA and Muslims throughout Canada, the West, and the world to start exorcising the demons of demonization and violence that are ultimately hurting them and many others around the world.