Poor ISIS. The left in our country -- liberals, progressives, the administration and their media cohorts -- can't face up to, or even admit, the evils of radical Islam, no matter what the Islamists do. One wonders if the jihadists set off a dirty nuke in the press room of the New York Times whether the reporters would even object. They'd probably write an editorial about the unhappy childhoods of the bombers and how one of them was once humiliated by a Christian schoolmate in a volleyball game during recess in Beirut.
It's almost like a disease. In fact, it is a disease -- the real Islamophobia... not irrational fear of Islam, but irrational fear of blaming Islam.
Consider Orlando. Not just the uber-lefty slickster Van Jones, who comes off like a re-upped CNN version of the Soviet Union's old Vladimir Pozner, but Kirsten Powers, playing her "liberal" role on Fox, blathered on about how she didn't really consider Omar Mateen a radical Islamic terrorist but someone who was mentally ill and an unfortunately guilty homophobic gay.
I hate to be rude to Kirsten, who seems like a nice person, but that is incredibly naive. Of course Mateen was a mentally ill homophobic gay, unfortunate or not. So what? The point is he was a mentally ill homophobic gay who believed in radical Islam. It is radical Islam that gave him the license to kill, indeed urged him to kill with its precepts, all those innocent people. Without radical Islam, they would all be alive today...Last week I attended a talk given by one of Canada's big time security/terrorism experts. I mean, this guy has a C.V. that runs to dozens of pages, and his expertise in the area, we were told, is second to none, not only in Canada but internationally, too.
I knew we were not going to see eye-to-eye, though, when, early on, he said he was a Democrat and used the Obama locution--or, rather, circumlocution--"violent extremism" to refer to the terrorist acts of radicalized Muslims who pledge allegiance to ISIS and/or other groups waging the jihad du jour.
Those in attendance were treated to a mind-blowing display of multi-coloured charts and graphs and maps, replete with dots and lines and arrows, along with a somewhat abstruse explanation re how all this stuff could help predict where in Africa groups such as Boko Haram might strike next.
As impressive as this was--and, boy, was it ever impressive!--it soon dawned on me that something was missing. That something: the understanding that all this "criminal" activity wasn't simply a matter of organized crime with an Islamic flavor--the equivalent of a Muslim Costa Nostra. It was about true belief, religious fanaticism and the desire to supersede Western Civilization so that Islam could be on top, as per Allah's promises to Islam's founder.
Sadly, however, this expert, like many on the Left, could not wrap his (secular, non-religious) head around the religious underpinnings of all the "violent extremism." He even opined that the Omar Mateens of the world would likely act out in a violent way no matter what (meaning that the Islamic radicalization doesn't really matter).
Seriously. He really said that.
He also said that, here in Canada, it was awesome how everyone got along so well. (Oh, yeah, Mr. "Expert"? Have you been to an Al Quds Day at Queen's Park where imports from Islamic lands shriek "Allahu Akbar!" and "Death to Israel"? Clearly not.)
It should come as no surprise that the whole presentation left me feeling depressed bordering on the bereft. Because if this is "the guy"--the one who advises government bigwigs and military brass on the ins and outs of terrorism--things are even worse than I thought they were.
And, believe me, going in I already thought they were pretty damn calamitous.
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