In the days and weeks since the Paris and San Bernardino terrorist attacks, Democrats have spent a lot of time worrying about an anti-Muslim backlash, and have proposed a House resolution to “condemn violence, bigotry, and hateful rhetoric towards Muslims in the United States” to deal with the problem. There does seem to have been an uptick in hateful incidents in the past month, although, as PJ Media’s Rick Moran reported, one of the incidents turned out to be a fake hate crime. Most of the incidents are still under investigation.
Still, despite Democrat hand-wringing over this Islamophobic “backlash,” Jews, not Muslims, are consistently the greatest victims of religiously targeted hate crimes in America.
In 2014, the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports: Hate Crime Statistics found that “of the 1,140 victims of anti-religious hate crimes: 56.8 percent [56.8%] were victims of crimes motivated by their offenders’ anti-Jewish bias.”
That amounts to approximately 647.52 instances where Jewish individuals, businesses or institutions were targeted. A mere “16.1 percent [16.1%] were victims of anti-Islamic (Muslim) bias,” amounting to approximately 183.54 instances where Muslim individuals, businesses or institutions were targeted.
Yet Democrats continue to focus on anti-Muslim hate crimes as if they are by far the most prevalent. Speaking at Muslim Advocates’ 10th anniversary dinner on December 3, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said that “actions predicated on violent talk toward Muslims will be prosecuted.”
Attorney General Loretta Lynch on Thursday warned that the Justice Department could take aggressive action against people whose anti-Muslim rhetoric “edges towards violence” and told the Muslim community that “we stand with you in this.”
Speaking at Muslim Advocate’s 10th anniversary dinner, Lynch said since the terrorist attacks in Paris last month, she is increasingly concerned with the “incredibly disturbing rise of anti-Muslim rhetoric … that fear is my greatest fear.”
Democratic Reps Don Beyer of Virginia, Keith Ellison of Minnesota, and Joe Crowley of New York made a point of visiting the Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Virginia, on December 4. This particular mosque is notorious. Some of the 9/11 terrorist hijackers and Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan reportedly attended services there. And Anwar al-Awlaki, who the U.S. government believes was a recruiter for Islamic terrorists, was an Imam at the mosque.
Beyer said he organized the gathering to help counter a wave of anti-Muslim rhetoric that has taken hold in the aftermath of recent terrorist attacks. He also urged House members across the country to attend mosque services to support U.S. Muslims.
Since that visit, Beyer has submitted to Congress a House resolution that deplores violence and “hate speech” directed towards Muslims. House Resolution 569 condemns “violence, bigotry, and hateful rhetoric towards Muslims in the United States.” The resolution has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee and currently has 82 co-sponsors.
Contained in the resolution is the troubling statement, “Whereas the constitutional right to freedom of religious practice is a cherished United States value and violence or hate speech towards any United States community based on faith is in contravention of the Nation’s founding principles.”
It’s nice to know that Democrats still recognize freedom of religion. Over the past few years, they’ve spent a lot of time and energy trying to force “reproductive rights” laws and gay marriage on Christian conscientious objectors, so people were beginning to wonder. But the statement does not show the same recognition from Democrats that the constitutional right to free speech is still “a cherished value” in the United States.
There is a reason for this. As Robert Spencer noted in FrontPageMagazine, the language “violence, bigotry, and hateful rhetoric” is designed to chill ideas and speech the left doesn’t like.
But what H. Res. 569 does is conflate violence — attacks on innocent civilians, which have no justification under any circumstances – with “bigotry” and “hateful rhetoric,” which are identified on the basis of subjective judgments. The inclusion of condemnations of “bigotry” and “hateful rhetoric” in this Resolution, while appearing to be high-minded, take on an ominous character when one recalls the fact that for years, Ellison, Carson, and his allies (including groups such as the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR) have been smearing any and all honest examination of how Islamic jihadists use the texts and teachings of Islam to incite hatred and violence as “bigotry” and “hateful rhetoric.” This Resolution is using the specter of violence against Muslims to try to quash legitimate research into the motives and goals of those who have vowed to destroy us, which will have the effect of allowing the jihad to advance unimpeded and unopposed.
The “progressive” left reflexively sides with medieval Islamic ideals over the American ideals of the Enlightenment. This has been especially true of late as it relates to the First Amendment. The reason for this “unholy alliance” is simple. Progressives and Islamists share a common enemy: us.
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