As has become common in the aftermath of terrorist attacks, shortly after the bomb attacks in Brussels, people have been blaming… oh, pretty much the entire Muslim population. How a total population of 1.7 billion people who are either adherents of, or loosely connected to, the world’s second-biggest religion could be responsible for these attacks is beyond me. Many took to Twitter to tweet their support for ‘the removal of Islam’ via the hashtag ‘StopIslam’, blaming the religion for the lives lost in the Brussels terrorist attacks (and those before), thus pretty much pointing the finger at all Muslims for the existence of terror itself.

Tweets using the trending hashtag include either anti-Islam sentiment, or support for Islam by Muslims who use the hashtag to repeat the obvious: that they are “Muslim, but not a terrorist.” Apparently, people forget that the biggest victims of terror are Muslim. Indeed, by saying that Muslims are responsible for these terror attacks, one is saying that (to name a few examples)…

…are all, in one way or another, responsible for attacks in the West.

It boggles the mind.

If people truly cared about the eradication of terrorism, and about its victims, then the trending hashtag on social media would not be ‘StopIslam’, but ‘StopImperialism’, ‘StopFalseFlagAttacks’, ‘StopFundingTerrorists’ and ‘StopNATO’. The fact that at least 4 million Muslims have died in Western wars since 1990 should shock any sane person in the West to his or her core.

In recent months, some in Europe have witnessed shocking and traumatising scenes up close: explosions, blood, the loss of limbs, death before their very eyes, civilians looking for loved ones, not knowing whether they have survived. If there is anyone on this planet that can relate to the horror they have witnessed, it is the Muslims in the Middle East and North Africa who have been terrorised for years by the very hands that are behind these attacks – and if they could, they would be the first to lend a helping hand.