On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a massive invasion of Ukraine. 

To Ukrainians, it’s a matter of life-or-death.

To Americans, Europeans and Westerners in general, it’s a horrific, unfolding tragedy.

But to nonwhites—and especially Islamics—throughout the world, the sympathies of these nations is a sign of racism and Islamophobia. 

The day after the invasion began, CBS News senior correspondent in Kyiv Charlie D’Agata said: “This isn’t a place, with all due respect, like Iraq or Afghanistan that has seen conflict raging for decades. This is a relatively civilised, relatively European – I have to choose those words carefully, too – city where you wouldn’t expect that, or hope that it’s going to happen.”

CBS

On social media, his comment was strongly criticized as dehumanizing non-white, non-European peoples. 

One Twitter user wrote: “Atrocities start with words and dehumanization. Atrocities unleashed upon millions in the ME, fueled by dictators labeled as reformists in the west. The racist subtext: Afghans, Iraqi & Syrian lives don’t matter, for they are deemed inferior—’uncivilized.'”

In fact, conditions in Ukraine have been relatively peaceful. Afghanistan has never actually been a nation, simply a patchwork of feuding warlords. This has been true from the time of Alexander the Great to the Taliban today. Dictators have always been the rulers of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. 

On February 25, Sky News broadcast a video of people in the central Ukrainian city of Dnipro making Molotov cocktails, explaining how grating Styrofoam makes the incendiary device stick to vehicles better.

A Twitter user wrote: “If this was done by Palestinians, Afghanistan or other nations resisting occupation, it would be terrorism. And during Mandela’s anti-apartheid era, it was also dubbed terrorism. For Europeans facing similar situations, it is resistance! Western duplicity knows no bounds.”

“Terrorism” is defined as “The unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.”

Defending one’s country from attack by another country is not terrorism. In fact, from ancient times, it has been seen as the highest virtue, calling forth loyalty and courage.

Palestinians have repeatedly targeted civilians—not soldiers of the Israeli Defense Forces—for death. In Afghanistan, women and children have been routinely massacred by warring factions.

There are solid reasons for fears of Islamic terrorism.

In his 2011 book, The Secrets of the FBI, Ronald Kessler notes the refusal of the Islamic community to identify known or potential terrorists within its ranks. 

Said Arthur M. Cummings, then the Bureau’s executive assistant director for national security: “I had this discussion with the director of a very prominent Muslim organization here in [Washington] D.C. And he said, ‘Why are you guys always looking at the Muslim community?’”

“I can name the homegrown cells, all of whom are Muslim, all of whom were seeking to kill Americans,” replied Cummings. “It’s not the Irish, it’s not the French, it’s not the Catholics, it’s not the Protestants. It’s the Muslims.”

On BFM TV, France’s most-watched cable news channel, journalist Philippe Corbe said: “We’re not talking here about Syrians fleeing the bombing of the Syrian regime backed by Putin, we’re talking about Europeans leaving in cars that look like ours to save their lives.”

This was heavily criticized: “This war is just revealing the western hypocrisy and racism at its peak.”

There is a difference between a Syrian dictator waging war against his own citizens, and a nuclear-armed country waging all-out war on a smaller, democratic nation. The skin color of the peoples involved has nothing to do with either action. 

“These are not the refugees we are used to… these people are Europeans,” Bulgarian Prime Minister Kiril Petkov told journalists of the Ukrainians. “These people are intelligent, they are educated people…. This is not the refugee wave we have been used to, people we were not sure about their identity, people with unclear pasts, who could have been even terrorists…

“In other words,” he added, “there is not a single European country now which is afraid of he current wave of refugees.”

Kiril Petkov 

President.bg, CC BY 2.5 BG <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/bg/deed.en&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

This was treated as racism by Islamics: “A refugee is a refugee, whether European, African or Asian,” Syrian journalist Okba Mohammad said.

In fact: By early 2021, 10 years after Syria’s civil war erupted, European Union states had taken in one million Syrian refugees and asylum seekers; Germany alone took more than half. In 2016, the European Union paid billions of euros for Turkey to continue hosting 3.7 million Syrians.

On February 6, 2016, The World Post carried this story: “Geneva III: The Stillborn Conference and the Endemic Failure of the International Community.”