Maybe Muslims Should Do More to Stop Islamophobia

Nothing on Earth is more predictable or tiresome than the Democrat outrage over “Islamophobia” every time a Muslim terrorizes a bunch of people in the name of Islam. I don’t want to have to be the one to break this to liberals, but they call it “terrorism” because the goal is to inspire terror, and the reason Muslims do it is because it works.

Therefore, to the extent that “Islamophobia” means anything other than people committing actual violence against Muslims, it is a problem we should all be supremely unconcerned about. People say mean things about and to me all the time, and I’m possibly the WASP-iest person you know. Moreover, if I was up at all hours of the night causing strange noises to emanate from my garage, with suspicious visitors coming and going at all hours of the night, no one would think twice about calling the cops on me because no one cares about being perceived as being bigoted towards Methodists.

Enter the execrable Jeet Heer with a post at TNR that is “provocatively” titled Who Will Stop Republican Islamophobia? Jeer’s thesis, which is insane on its face, is that Frank Gaffney’s Center for Security Policy is a) basically a virulent hate group and b) singlehandedly responsible for turning the Republican party away from the “sensible” Republican rhetoric of George W. Bush and towards the “dangerous extremism” of Trump.

Democrats would not be Democrats if they didn’t profess a belief that Republican foreign policy views were controlled by a shadowy cabal of nefarious characters with ulterior motives. For years the boogeyman du jour was AIPAC, but someone apparently told liberals that repeated harping on AIPAC was exposing their latent and rampant anti-semitism a little too clearly, and so now CSP is apparently in the cross hairs. I’m sure they’re thrilled to learn they have such pull.

I have an idea for people who are concerned about the completely non-lethal threat of Islamophobia: Maybe instead of asking relatively obscure think tanks to take responsibility for Islamophobia, maybe we could ask Muslims to take some responsibility? If Republicans are to be held responsible for the rhetoric of Gaffney – who probably 98% of Republicans have literally never heard of – why aren’t all Muslims held responsible for the rhetoric of worldwide celebrity Anjem Choudary?

Let’s have a reminder of the scoreboard here – the number of people in the United States who have been killed this century due to Islamophobia still sits at zero. The number of people who have been killed because of rampant fear about being labeled an Islamophobe is 14 after San Bernardino.

The assumption that Donald Trump needs Frank Gaffney to tell him to say idiotic things is flatly at odds with the history of Donald Trump. Even if Trump is elected, his plan to bar Muslims from immigrating to the United States will never be enacted, and even if it is, no one will die as a result of it.

Personally, I find it far more troubling that groups like CAIR are involved in actively trying to convince the United States Muslim population that San Bernardino was a false flag which could (based on recent evidence) lead to further American deaths than I am about anything Frank Gaffney says. Maybe – and I realize this is a radical idea – the best way for us to combat Islamophobia is for Muslims to stop killing people in the name of their religion.

Obviously, people of all religions commit violent acts but the incidence of these acts occurring while the perpetrators are shouting “Jesus Christ is great!” or “Buddha be praised!” is pretty shockingly low by comparison. Maybe the cause of Islamophobia is people who specifically want us to be afraid of Muslims – which is to say, Muslim terrorists.

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