By Abubakar N. Kasim, Toronto, Canada

THE media and islamophobes continue to harass Muslims. 

They demand statements of condemnation every time a crazy mad man takes matters into his own hands and commit atrocities. 

No matter how much strong the language of condemnation the community issues,   they are never perceived as strong and loud enough. 

No other community is held to that standard except Muslims.

No one bothers to examine the mental status of the alleged terrorist or to analyze the factors that lead a person to lose his sanity and go wild.

Bullies, as I explained in my article published by the online magazine Muslim Matters, never the reach the level of satisfaction no matter how much you give in. They will always demand and expect more. 

Unfortunately there are Muslim leaders who fall into the bullies’ tactics and turn against their own community. 

These leaders act as someone who instead of protecting little children in the face of a bully, he instead joins the villain and turns against the victims. 

Take for instance the recent news about Saudi Arabia's decree  allowing women to drive thinking that bullies will be pleased and leave them alone. 

Those who hate Muslims will not be satisfied as bullies never reach satisfaction no matter how high you jump to appease them in their demands. 

Even if the situation was the other way around and only women were allowed to drive in the kingdom, bullies would have still complained. They would have said Arabs don't respect women and treat them as slaves by forcing them to drive.

The community leadership ought to wake up from the dirty games played by bullies whose purpose is to dehumanizing us.                                 

Those who are eager to issue statements of condemnation even before the investigation is complete   should know that in doing so they are taking direct responsibility of the crime.

They should not be surprised then if they see backlash against the community or if the investigators give them a visit and question them if they had anything to do with terrorism.

How could you apologize for something you have nothing to do with?

Do you see any other community conducting itself as such no matter how awful their own followers act?

Instead of being obsessed with condemnation we should play a different game altogether and focus on helping humanity in many levels.  

No matter how much apologies you issue, bullies will never be thankful.

Even if all the imams wear hats of making Muslims great again and write statements of condemnation on their hats; even if imams use loud speakers to condemn terrorism; even if they include it in their daily five prayers - bullies will never perceive it as enough. 

As Omar Alnatour wrote in the Huffington Post, if we have to apologize for terrorism, then so should everyone else.

He then asked, “Why are Muslims the only group that are required to apologize for and condemn the actions of criminals that associate with their group?

“To put things into perspective, ask yourself: Why aren’t all white males asked to apologize for the slavery that white males endorsed less than two centuries ago? The slavery in which one third of slaves were Muslims. Why aren’t all Buddhists asked to apologize for the radical Buddhist monks in Myanmar that are violently attacking Muslims?”

The community leadership, instead of being obsessed issuing statements of condemnation, they should try to be proactive in directing their energy to what will benefit their community and humanity at large.

Issuing an apology will not help to stop the madness we are witnessing. It will not make us any safer either.

Instead it will backfire against the entire members of the community whom have nothing to do with the madness that is taking place.

We should ask why has humanity has lost its human touch?

We should not allow the bully to make extremism as a Muslim invention. All humanity has been affected by this ailment. We ought to recognize this as a fact. Humanity in general has  lost their sense of balance. Not until we recognize this as a human problem can we tackle it effectively.  

We should never allow ourselves to be used as pawns. The Muslim leadership should act with dignity and hikma, educate the public on issues blamed on Muslims, root cause analysis and stand up to oppression.. They should never take ownership of extremism as it is a universal phenomenon affecting all humanity.

We should urge humanity to come back to its senses – to feed the poor around the world, to stop invading other countries, to put an end to the indiscriminate bombings and to take care of the natives whom have been denied their basic human needs and treated as second class citizens in their own land.