About that Backlash Violence Against Muslims

Whenever there is a terror attack in which Muslims kill a bunch of non-Muslims, it seems that there is a cottage industry of university professors, journalists and other habitual leftists who go on television and wring their hands about the possibility of anti-Muslim backlash. The theory, I suppose, is that the thing we need to be concerned about is not the regular, ongoing violent attacks against Muslims towards non-Muslims, but rather that non-Muslims might say a mean thing against the Muslims.

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We’ve already been treated to a special species of this moronic jackassery courtesy of our own Secretary of State John Kerry, who suggested that the newspaper employees killed during the terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo had it coming because they insulted Muslims. The United States media is dutifully following suit, reporting an “anti-Muslim” backlash that includes unverified reports of such horrors as the Eiffel Tower being spray painted on a Mosque, along with “threatening phone calls” being placed to a mosque in Florida.

Meanwhile, no actual acts of violence whatsoever against Muslims in either Europe or America have been reported since the Paris attacks.

You know what there have been? Several more violent attacks by Muslims against non-Muslims, including the suicide vest attack in Paris last night (by a woman who was surely a three year old orphan, or at least a widow), and another terrorist plot in Paris last night that was narrowly averted thanks to a violent raid by French police.

While there has been no evidence of Europe’s Christian/Jewish population engaging in violent acts against Muslims, there’s quite a bit of evidence that Europe’s Muslim population has been inspired by the awesomeness of ISIS into engaging in copycat attacks against Christians and Jews:

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Three young men on scooters — one of whom wore a T-shirt bearing “an ISIS symbol” — stabbed a Jewish teacher Wednesday evening, Marseilles prosecutor Brice Robin said. The assailants insulted the teacher, threatened to kill him and stabbed him in the stomach, arms and legs, the prosecutor said. The attackers carried a phone with a photo of Mohammed Merah, who was responsible for a series of 2012 attacks on soldiers and schoolchildren in Toulouse and Montauban. They fled the scene, and police are looking for them, Robin said.

The news media and other assorted liberals have a vested interest in pretending that the violence here is a two-way street, and that the attacks between Muslims and non-Muslims are roughly equivalent so that they can tsk tsk and blame the whole thing on “religious violence” in general as opposed to “the violence of one religion which happens to be Islam.”

Look, without forgetting the obvious fact that most of the world’s billion or so Muslims aren’t terrorists, it is an absolute fact right now that the violence is one-sided and is coming exclusively from people who claim Islam as a religion. While that doesn’t mean all Muslims should be regarded as terrorists, nor is it information that should be completely disregarded.

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People use shorthand information to develop “heuristics” that help them make sense of the world. The reality we have is that we don’t have the time or ability to get to know well every single person we interact with on a daily basis – sometimes we have to make snap judgments about, in particular, what constitutes a threat and what does not. And the non-stop barrage of television coverage of violence committed by Muslims around the globe in the name of their religion is increasingly becoming part of the heuristic of people who have fought it for a long time.

And with good reason

 

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