See, I am being accused every day now of being complicit in mass murder and even of being a murderer myself. Yet there is no amount of this defamation that I could be subjected to that would ever make me become a murderer myself. There is no amount of lies and abuse they could throw at me that would ever make me turn to violent “extremism” myself. And I think this is true of most people — at least most who are sane. Yet McDonough and Shane seem to take it for granted that false accusations against Muslims will make them kill, and that instead of telling the Muslims in question to get hold of themselves and be reasonable, this means we have to tiptoe around them and avoid saying anything that even appears to be a false accusation — and we even have to stop telling truths, for fear they will fuel “extremism.” After all, the U.S. government and the media are engaged in a massive operation of denial of the obvious fact that Islamic jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and supremacism. And why? Because they are afraid of fueling “extremism” by appearing to associate Islam with terrorism. And so Islamic jihadists can associate Islam with terrorism all day, but we are not allowed to notice.
This is madness.
Instead, he said, Muslim Americans should be treated as a crucial ally of the government in combating extremism….
Fine. Such as who? Hamas-linked CAIR, with its “Don’t Talk to the FBI” poster? MPAC, with its hollow and deceptive condemnations of terror? Exactly which Muslim group in America has actually shown itself to be a “crucial ally of the government in combating extremism”? Can McDonough answer that? Can Shane?
Since the Fort Hood attacks, there have been a number of foiled plots by radicalized Muslims in the United States, as well as by extreme right-wing and white supremacist ideologues.
Far more of the former than of the latter, but Scott Shane will not tell you that.
Conservative critics of the Obama administration, including Representative Peter T. King, Republican of New York, have accused it of political correctness in avoiding applying the “Islamic” label to plots and attacks by Muslims. Mr. King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, has held a series of hearings focusing exclusively on the threat from Muslim extremists, drawing fire from Muslim groups. In March, on the eve of Mr. King’s first hearing, Mr. McDonough spoke at a Virginia Islamic center to reassure Muslim Americans that the government would fight extremism without practicing “guilt by association.”…
No reassurance was offered to non-Muslim Americans that the government would fight extremism by doing anything effective to call Muslim groups in the U.S. to account for their deceptive and empty support for anti-terror efforts.
A National Security Council expert on extremism who helped devise the new strategy, Quintan Wiktorowicz, said the administration was aware of “inaccurate training” on Islam for law enforcement officers. He said the administration would compile “gold standard” materials to be posted on the Web for officials to draw upon.
A January study by a liberal research group found a pattern of misleading and inflammatory training about Islam across the country, and a 2009 F.B.I. training document obtained recently by the American Civil Liberties Union gave a provocative account of Islam. That F.B.I. PowerPoint presentation was used for classes for law enforcement personnel at the bureau’s academy in Virginia, but it is no longer in use, according to the bureau.
The F.B.I. document recommended two books by Robert Spencer, an anti-Muslim blogger and author whose work was repeatedly cited in the online manifesto of Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian accused of killing at least 76 people last month. Mr. Spencer, who operates the Web site Jihad Watch, has said he opposes violence and condemns Mr. Breivik’s actions.
Yep. But Scott Shane thinks it pertinent to drag Breivik into this piece anyway, since he can’t find anything actually “misleading and inflammatory” in what I write. Breivik will have to serve. And he will. Now at last the media and its Islamic supremacist allies have someone other than Tim McVeigh to cite as evidence of “right-wing extremism.” And they will ride it for all it’s worth.
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