Posted: 17 Jun 2016 06:18 PM PDT
The deadliest mass shooting in American history happened because
of Islamophobia.
Islamophobia
killed 49 people in Orlando. It didn’t kill 49 Muslims. Instead it allowed
Omar Mateen, a Muslim terrorist, to kill 49 people in the name of his
Islamic ideology and the Islamic State.
Omar, like so many other Muslim killers, could have been stopped. He talked
about killing people when he worked at G4S Security, a Federal contractor
that provided services to the Department of Homeland Security and the State
Department. But, according to one of the co-workers he stalked, a former
police officer, his employers refused to do anything about it because he was
a Muslim.
The FBI conducted an investigation of Omar Mateen. They put him on a watch
list and sent informants. They interviewed him and concluded that his claims
of Al Qaeda ties and terrorist threats were reactions to “being marginalized
because of his Muslim faith.” Omar told the agents that he said those things
because “his co-workers were discriminating against him and teasing him
because he was Muslim.”
And they believed him.
Poor Omar wasn’t a potential terrorist. He was just a victim of Islamophobia.
Omar got away with homophobic comments that would have gotten Americans fired
because he was Muslim. He weathered an “extensive” FBI investigation because
he was Muslim.
Anyone who says that there is no such thing as Muslim Privilege ought to look
at Omar Mateen.
There is a direct line between Omar’s Muslim privilege and the Pulse
massacre. Omar Mateen’s Muslim privilege protected him from consequences.
While the media studiously paints the image of a beleaguered population of
American Muslims suffering the stigma of constant suspicion, Omar’s Muslim
background actually served as a shield and excused behavior that would have
been unacceptable for anyone else. Omar Mateen’s Muslim privilege shielded
him until he was actually murdering non-Muslims.
And Omar’s case is not unique. The Fort Hood killer, Nidal Hasan, handed out
business cards announcing that he was a Jihadist. He delivered a presentation
justifying suicide bombings, but no action was taken. Like Omar, the FBI was
aware of Hasan. It knew that he was talking to Al Qaeda bigwig Anwar
Al-Awlaki, yet nothing was done. Instead of worrying about his future
victims, the FBI was concerned that investigating him and interviewing him
would “harm Hasan’s career”.
One of his classmates later said that the military authorities, “Don't want
to say anything because it would be considered questioning somebody's
religious belief, or they're afraid of an equal opportunity lawsuit.”
Would the FBI have been as sensitive if Nidal Hasan had been named Frank Wright?
No more than Omar Mateen would have kept his security job if his name had
been Joe Johnson.
It’s an increasingly familiar story.
The neighbors of San Bernardino killers Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik
noticed that something strange was going on, but they were afraid of
profiling Muslims. If they had done the right thing, the 14 victims of the
two Muslim killers would still be alive. If the FBI had done the right thing
with Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood victims would still be alive and whole. If the
FBI had done the right thing with Omar Mateen, his 49 victims would still be
alive and those he wounded would still be whole.
We have some basic choices to make. We can empathize with Muslims or with
their victims.
We cannot however do both.
After 9/11, Muslims somehow became the biggest victim group in America. And
even if you contend that most Muslims are not responsible for the actions of
Islamic fundamentalist groups, even if you believe that most Muslims are
being wrongly blamed for the actions of a smaller group of radicals, the
pernicious myth of Muslim victimhood has become a distorting force that
protects terrorists.
Muslim victimhood has elevated Islamist groups such as CAIR to the front row
of political discourse alongside legitimate civil rights organizations,
despite their terror links and history of obstructing law enforcement efforts
to fight Islamic terrorism, while mainstreaming their Islamist agendas.
Muslim victimhood has silenced the victims of Muslim terrorism. Every Muslim
terror attack is swiftly diverted to the inevitable “backlash” narrative in
which the media turns away from the bodies in the latest terror attack to
bring us the stories of the real Muslim victims who fear being blamed for it.
This obscene act of media distraction silences the victims of Muslim
terrorism and rewards the enablers and accomplices of Muslim terrorism
instead. It is every bit as terrible as claiming that the real victims of a
serial killer are his family members who are being blamed for not turning him
in, instead of the people he killed and the loved ones they left behind.
Muslim victimhood protects Muslim terrorists like Omar Mateen. It shields
them from scrutiny. It invents excuses for them. While Omar made his
preparations, while the FBI investigation of him was botched, the media
leaped nimbly from a thousand petty claims of Muslim victimhood. And the
worst of them may have been Tahera Ahmad, a Muslim woman who claimed she was
discriminated against when a flight attendant poured her soda in a cup
instead of being given a can. This insane nonsense received days of media
coverage. That’s more airtime than any American victim of Islamic terrorism
has received.
The media will wait as short a period as it can and turn away from Orlando to
some manufactured viral media claim of Muslim discrimination that will be
unbearably petty. Meanwhile the next Omar Mateen will be plotting his next
act of terror. It’s time to tell the truth.
Islamic terrorism is caused by Muslim privilege. These acts of violence are
motivated by racism and supremacism in Islam. Allahu Akbar, the Islamic
battle cry often associated with acts of terror and ethnic cleansing since
its origin in Mohammed’s persecution of the Jews, is a statement of Muslim
superiority to non-Muslims.
Muslim terrorism is not the groan of an oppressed minority. Its roots run
back to racist and supremacist Islamic societies in Saudi Arabia and Egypt
where non-Muslims have few if any civil rights. Muslims are a global
majority. Islamic terrorism is their way of imposing their religious system
on everyone.
Standing in solidarity with Muslims after Orlando makes as much sense as
standing in solidarity with Klansmen after the Charleston massacre. No one
should be standing in solidarity with hate groups.
Omar wasn’t radicalized by the “internet”. He got his ideas from Islamic
clerics who got their ideas from Islam. He was “radicalized” by the holiest
texts of Islam. Just like every other Muslim terrorist. His actions weren’t
“senseless” or “nihilistic”, he was acting out the Muslim privilege of a
bigoted ideology.
Even in this country, the majority of hate crimes are not directed at
Muslims. Instead Muslims have disproportionately contributed to persecuting
various minority groups. Orlando is only the latest example of this trend. In
Europe, Jews are fleeing Sweden and France because of Muslim persecution. In
Germany, gay refugees have to be housed separately from Muslim migrants. So
do Christian refugees. This isn’t the behavior of victims. These are the actions
of oppressors.
Muslims are not part of the coalition of the oppressed, but of the
oppressors. The sooner we recognize that, the sooner we can deal stop Islamic
terrorism and protect the victims of Muslim terrorists.
Muslim privilege killed 49 people in Orlando. How many people will it kill
next week or next month? How many will it kill in the next decade or the next
century?
The Muslim genocide of non-Muslims is already happening in Syria and Iraq.
Islam has a long genocidal history. And if we continue to confuse the
oppressors and the oppressed, the next genocide we fail to stop may be our
own.
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