Newtown or Boston?

Jonathan Tobin has correctly pointed out the stark differences between the national debate that followed the Newtown massacre and the one that has followed the Boston terrorist attack.

In his words:

One crime was committed by a person motivated by no cause or political interest and driven only by personal demons. Another crime was committed by two people whose actions were clearly driven by their religious and political beliefs. Under these circumstances, which of these terrible tragedies do you think would be considered an incident that could only be properly understood as something that ought to spur the nation to specific political actions?

After Newtown, politicians rose up to attack the NRA. After Boston, politicians insisted that the Tsarneav brothers did not represent Islam.

To be fair, it is more likely that an American will suffer from gun violence than from a terrorist attack. More people have been killed through gun violence than have been slaughtered by Islamic terrorists… in America, that is.

So, one does understand why gun violence might appear to be a more pressing political issue.

But, as I have often pointed out, if the politicians really wanted to prevent events like the Newtown massacre, they would pass laws making it easier to commit psychotics to psychiatric facilities involuntarily.

At their best, the politicians are mumbling about providing more mental health care. They are not talking about involuntary commitment… a policy that would help to treat those afflicted with some forms of psychoses and would save many, many lives.

Obviously, these are not serious people.

The hubbub about the NRA also obscures the issue of who is committing the gun violence and where it is being committed. Politicians, especially those of a more progressive stripe refuse to see that Rahm Emanuel’s Chicago has been leading the nation in gun violence. No one mentions that it takes an especially inept and incompetent municipal administration to allow a city to descend into such a state.

The attack on the NRA has been designed to cover up the true causes of American gun violence. Left leaning politicians and media pundits throw up a smoke screen in order to obscure the role that policy decisions have played in Newtown, Aurora and Tucson. They have also deflected attention from the failure of Democratic mayors to impose law and order on local communities.

Tobin emphasizes that the Boston terrorist attack was not the act of a deranged psychotic. It was, he says: “the latest in a long string of terrorist acts motivated by Islamist hatred for the West and America….”

It is also fair to mention that when Muslims commit murder and mayhem in the name of their religion in America, the media and politicians try to ignore it. The Obama administration won’t even call it Islamic terrorism.

If we grant that there is more gun violence than Islamic terrorism in America, when you look beyond our shores, you see that Islam has fostered an enormous amount of terrorism around the world.

Last week, Bill O’Reilly was interviewing the national director of the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a notably pro-Islamist group.

When Nihad Awad tried to explain that Islam was a religion of peace, O’Reilly interrupted:

You not admitting that radical Islam drives worldwide terrorism puts you in the category where you have no credibility because the facts are the facts. Ninety percent of worldwide terrorism is radical Islam, period. … I don’t know what Islam means to you with all due respect. That’s not the topic.

O’Reilly continued:

I’m telling you that radical Islamists, under the banner of jihad, are causing the most intense terrorism the earth has ever seen and you are denying it. So either you are naïve or I mean, you are just way out of touch. Do you not have a television set?

Of course, no one believes that all Muslims are terrorists, but almost all terrorism is being committed by Muslims. And it is being committed in the name of Islam.

Thus, it is incumbent on Muslim leaders to take responsibility and to correct what is wrong. They might follow the example set by the Tsarnaev uncle, Ruslan Tsarni and apologize to the victims of terror.

Uncle Ruslan is not a terrorist. He had renounced his brother’s family when it turned toward radical Islam. Yet, he felt it is duty to apologize on behalf of his family, even though he had no direct responsibility for the attack.

Uncle Ruslan did not share the guilt, but he was correct to say that he shared the shame for actions committed by members of his family and community.

It isn’t too difficult to understand why the politicians are so quick to blame the NRA for actions that have nothing to do with it, but so slow to even imply that Islam had anything to do with what happened at the Boston Marathon.

To state the obvious, there are a lot more Muslims in the world than there are NRA members.  And the Muslims are a lot more dangerous than are the members of the NRA.

In one sense this means that terrorism works. It provokes a fear of Islam, an Islamophobia, if you will. And this tells the terrorists that their actions have succeeded in eliciting respect for their religion.

How many people, after an act of Islamist terrorism rush out to express their great respect for Muslims? How many politicians are doing everything in their power to accommodate Islamic sensibilities? In so doing, they are feeding the beast.

Islamic terrorism is an effort to force people to respect Islam. People whose culture has failed at modernity and who risk being ignored, become central players in world history by committing acts of terrorism.

If your achievements do not command respect, then you can extort respect by deconstructing the successes of others. 

Islamists continue to perform acts of terrorism because, from their perspective, it’s working.