Even as the victims of the terror attacks in San Bernardino fight to recover from their wounds, and the day before authorities revealed that at least one of the two Muslims who perpetrated the terror attack had pledged allegiance to ISIS, the Washington Post published a long article featuring the worries of Muslims that they will experience a “backlash” in America.
“American Muslims say they are living through an intensely painful moment,” the Post sonorously informs its readers before adding that Muslims “feel growing anti-Muslim sentiment” due to recent terror attacks in Paris and California.
“Muslims said they are bracing for an even more toxic climate in which Americans are increasingly suspicious of Muslims,” the paper insisted in its December 3 piece.
The paper goes on to scold America for how it views Muslims.
Muslims say that Americans, like many in Europe, often do not draw a distinction between radical Islamist militants, such as those associated with the Islamic State and al-Qaeda, and the religion of Islam and its followers who have no ties to extremism.
The article goes on to quote a “human rights lawyer” named Arsalan Iftikhar who complains, “When a Muslim American commits a murder, their religion is brought front and center. With anyone else, [it’s] a crazy, kooky loner.”
Neither the paper nor Mr. Iftikhar noted that when Muslims murder, they invariably claim to be doing it in the name of their God, whereas few if any of those other killers mention religion as a motivating factor.
Then the Post gets to blaming Republican presidential candidates for this “backlash.”
“Many Muslims,” the Post wrote, “said fear of Islam is being fueled by the heated rhetoric of Republican presidential candidates, particularly businessman Donald Trump, who has called for surveillance of some mosques and requiring Muslims to register with the government.”
“Islamophobia is the accepted form of racism in America,” human rights attorney Iftikhar proclaimed.
The paper then quotes members of the Council on American Islamic Relations as to this “climate” of fear and cites a Pew poll that shows that more Americans than ever feel that Islam is a religion of violence. The piece also quotes a series of other Muslim Americans voicing their fears of a “backlash.”
The article comes on the heels of an appearance at a gathering of Muslims by Obama’s U.S. Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, who pledged to prosecute anyone voicing anti-Muslim sentiment.
But one thing the Post piece did not seem much interested in is the fact that FBI statistics don’t provide much evidence that anti-Muslim hate crimes are a major problem in the U.S.A.
Evidence for real anti-Muslim violence in the U.S. seems to be incredibly slim. According to the FBI’s hate crime statistics, only 13.7 percent of hate crimes were perpetrated against Muslims. On the other hand, fully 60.3 percent were committed against Jews. So, in truth, “hate crimes” against Muslims seem far and few between in the U.S.A., at least according to the FBI.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston or email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.