Old Joe Biden’s ghostwriters issued a statement Thursday to congratulate Muslims on Eid al-Fitr, the feast marking the end of the fasting-by-day-and-gorging-by-night month of Ramadan. Predictably, it was anodyne and obsequious in the extreme, with Biden celebrating how Muslims “decorate their homes, give gifts to loved ones, wear new clothes, and visit family and friends.” The faux president is made to add: “I am moved by the generosity that is shown from families that can provide food and give charity to those in need through Zakat-al-Fitr.” In the course of all this flattery, Biden’s writer drops in a serious note: there is now a U.S. government task force dedicated to fighting “Islamophobia.”
The statement quickly shifts from telling us how wonderful it is that Muslims wear new clothes and visit family and friends to depicting Muslims as victims: “Eid al-Fitr marks the completion of a holy month dedicated to devotion, charity, and reflection—a time when we also remember Muslim communities around the world that are enduring conflict, poverty, hunger, and disease, and those that are displaced from their homes.” That served to set up the big announcement. Biden’s ghostwriter continued: “As we celebrate our blessings this Eid, let us also recommit ourselves to the timeless work of building peace and standing up for the rights and dignity of all people.” When the White House writers start depicting Old Joe babbling about peace and human rights, you know something bad is coming.
Doing this work for peace and human dignity will apparently require new restrictions on speech: “My Administration is also committed to addressing all forms of hate, including Islamophobia. This is why I established an interagency task force with senior government officials to tackle this and related challenges and encourage every American to build a more inclusive nation.” Good, because Lord knows we aren’t “inclusive” enough yet. Every last person in the world doesn’t live here on the taxpayer dime yet, so there is a long way to go.
Meanwhile, exactly what pressing need is this interagency task force designed to address? Are Muslims in the U.S. really subjected to such widespread discrimination and harassment that the feds need to step in? The record shows otherwise. FBI hate crime statistics show that Muslims are rarely targeted in hate crimes, which far more often victimize Jews and others. In fact, anti-Muslim hate crimes actually declined by 42% from 2020 to 2021. But those facts don’t fit the narrative that Muslims face widespread discrimination and harassment in the United States, and so the facts have to take a back seat.
And how is the new “interagency task force with senior government officials” going to “tackle” “Islamophobia”? No doubt we will now be inundated with taxpayer-funded material about how wonderful Islam is. In the nature of things, however, there will still be human disputes, and some of them will involve Muslims. Now that “Islamophobia” has been established as targeted by the government, these disputes will all be ascribed to “Islamophobia” and offered as evidence of how urgently needed this “interagency task force” really is. The “Islamophobia” task force will therefore likely enjoy ever-increasing budgets. That’s how government agencies work: they have to justify their existence, so they keep having to find more and more of the thing they’re supposed to be stamping out.
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Most importantly, since the Biden regime is now officially committed to efforts to convince us of the wonderfulness of Islam, it is not likely to look kindly upon critics of the religion, including opponents of jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women. Will the interagency task force make any efforts to protect the right of Americans to oppose jihad terror and Sharia oppression? Will it be careful to distinguish such criticism from the alleged hatred that this task force is supposed to be combating, or will it act upon the assumption that any and all criticism of Islam, and even of jihad terror, subjects Muslims to “hate” and must accordingly be silenced?
Since the Left has been insisting that opposition to jihad violence is “hate” ever since 9/11, my money is on the latter. But this is a preposterous claim that, if followed logically (which of course it never will be, as this “Islamophobia” business is fundamentally illogical), would preclude any criticism of anything as possibly leading to “hate” and violence. In practice, it will preclude all criticism of anything the Left favors. And the freedom of speech will be eroded even further.
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