How 'Islamophobia' Endangers Us All

Counterterror analyst Paul Sperry reported in the New York Post last Saturday:

[The New York Police Department] censored an anti-terror handbook to appease offended Muslims, even though it has accurately predicted radicalization patterns in recent ‘homegrown’ terror cases.”

So it is demonstrated yet again: Islamophobia endangers us all.

To clarify: “Islamophobia” is a propaganda neologism with no fixed meaning.

Nowadays, it is frequently used to refer to two phenomena that are actually quite disparate: vigilante attacks and harassment of innocent Muslims, which are never justifiable; and honest examination of how Islamic jihadis use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify hatred, violence, and oppression. Both are called “Islamophobia,” and held to be beyond the pale in polite society.

When I say that “Islamophobia endangers us all,” I am referring to the application of the label “Islamophobia” to realistic appraisals of jihad terrorists’ motivating ideology. The stigmatization and marginalization of such analysis is endangering Americans, and will continue to do so.

Here’s how. Patrick Dunleavy, former deputy inspector general of the New York state prisons’ criminal intelligence division, noted:

[The discarded NYPD report] was extremely accurate on how the radicalization process works and what indicators to look for.

Former FBI agent John Guandolo explains the facts on the ground:

The FBI has its hands full with over 1,000 open cases on ISIS terrorist suspects already in the U.S., and it needs the help of well-trained eyes and ears on the ground at the local and state level. The bad guys know if police don’t know this stuff at the ground level, they win.

In December 2015 in San Bernardino, when the Islamic jihadist couple Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik murdered fourteen people at a Christmas party, a friend of one of their neighbors recalled that the neighbor had told him about suspicious activity at the couple’s home. Said the friend:

Sounds like she didn’t do anything about it … She didn’t want to do any kind of racial profiling. She’s like, “I didn’t call it in … maybe it was just me thinking something that’s not there.”

For years, this neighbor had been force-fed the value that noticing suspicious behavior by Muslims amounts to “bigotry” and “racial profiling,” or “Islamophobia.” Fourteen people are now dead because politically correct niceties were preserved; because hurt feelings were placed ahead of objectivity.

This wasn’t a singular incident. The fear of “Islamophobia” charges has overridden, or threatened to override, concern about jihad terrorism for years. On December 22, 2008, five Muslims were convicted of plotting to enter the U.S. Army base in Fort Dix, New Jersey, to murder as many soldiers as they could. A sixth received five years in prison for weapons offenses. The plot was uncovered in January 2006 when two of the terrorists entered a Circuit City in New Jersey and asked a clerk to convert a videotape to DVD. The video showed men shooting automatic weapons and screaming “Allahu akbar.”

Although the clerk was alarmed, he hesitated over what to do.

Years of politically correct indoctrination from the establishment media made him wonder if it would be wrong to stop these men. Finally, he asked a coworker:

Dude, I just saw some really weird s—. I don’t know what to do. Should I call someone or is that being racist?

His concern was ironic, given that the Fort Dix plotters were all white European Muslims from the former Yugoslavia. In any case, his coworker urged him to contact police, and he ultimately did.

His hesitation is yet another indication of how successful American Muslim advocacy groups have been in portraying resistance to the global jihad as “racism” and “Islamophobia.” We can be grateful that this young man came forward eventually. Because, as with the San Bernardino attack, we know what may happen if the next young person in his position decides that it is better to keep silent than to do anything that might appear to be “racist” or “Islamophobic.”

Islamophobia: it endangers us all. But not in the way the establishment media would have you believe.