Watching the Sunday morning talk shows leads a viewer to conclude these TV hosts with their Beltway regulars are living in an alternate universe. While there can and should be an honest debate about whether or not a mosque should be built near the World Trade Center site, it is dishonest to label close to 70 percent of the American public as Islamophobes and bigots. All the hand-wringing, sighing and pained expressions! The incomprehension at how hundreds of millions of citizens could be so misinformed, so misguided! It must be the fault of fear mongers and opportunistic politicians! But not to worry, the valiant, extravagantly-paid journalist celebrities of the “establishment media” will expose the retrogrades, castigate the perpetrators of ignorance and educate the unwashed masses!
Perhaps the low point of the morning was Christaine Amanpour’s interview with Daisy Kahn, the wife of Imam Feisal Rauf. At one point Ms. Kahn, in sorrowful tones, compared the resistance to building the mosque with anti-Semitism. This from the wife of the man who will not condemn Hamas, a terrorist organization openly dedicated to the extermination of Israel. Not surprisingly, the remark went unchallenged by Ms. Amanpour. Anti-Semitism is an irrational hatred of a people simply because of who they are. How dare Ms. Kahn compare this despicable, centuries-old behavior to the completely rational and justifiable concerns that growing numbers of Americans are feeling when it comes to radical Islam!
What’s remarkable about the American people is not their sense of outrage, but their restraint. The pundits of the “establishment media” want the American people to suspend their good judgment and their own innate sense of self-preservation in the name of some abstract and mindless tolerance. But tolerance of what? As has been pointed out many times, all Muslims are not terrorists — but 99.9 percent of terrorists are Muslim.
Islamic radicals have committed 15,897 deadly terror attacks around the world since 9/11. This is as of Monday, August 21st. These bombings, assassinations, beheadings and various outrages haven’t been committed by Sikhs, Lutherans, Buddhists, Jews, Catholics, Mormons, Zoroastrians or atheists. They were committed by the jihadists of Allah, encouraged by imams and ayatollahs and plotted from mosques and Islamic centers. This isn’t speculation. It’s established fact.
Some of the 9/11 terrorists plotted at the Dar Al-Hijrah mosque in northern Virginia, whose Imam was Anwar Al-Awlaqi, now hiding somewhere in Yemen. The Ft. Hood jihadist had connections to this mosque and Al-Awlaqi. The blind sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, one of the ringleaders of the ‘93 World Trade Center bombing, was the leader of the al-Salaam Mosque in New Jersey. The rapidly growing Somali Muslim immigrant population has been followed by numerous arrests of Somali Muslims, most recently fourteen arrested in three states on charges of providing material support to terrorist organizations — something unheard of just ten years ago. “Homegrown terrorism” is becoming an increasingly dangerous threat.
So why the incomprehension from the mainstream media? Why the sanctimonious moral superiority dripping from their microphones and pens? And why is Imam Feisal Rauf, linked to the nefarious Muslim Brotherhood organization and advocate of the same Sharia law that motivated the 9/11 terrorists, on the US State Department’s payroll currently touring the Middle East?
The primary reason is the well-honed myopia of the elites induced by a decades-long toxic brew of excessive multiculturalism, moral relativism and political correctness. I suspect another reason is fear. Every time a phony so-called moderate Islamist such as Feisal Abdul Rauf pretends to speak for the American Islamic community, he is making a veiled threat. If you don’t support me, you’ll be alienating the Islamic community, driving them to the extremists. The editors, columnists and TV anchors of the “establishment media” don’t want to end up like film director Theo Van Gogh, who was stabbed to death in plain day by a Muslim jihadist, or like the Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard and the creators of South Park, who have received not-so-veiled threats for their satires of Mohammed.
There is an aspect of Islam that is peaceful, such as the earlier verses of the Koran when Mohammed tries to appeal to the Jews and Christians to accept him. But the latter verses are all violent, and these verses take precedence under the doctrine of abrogation.
And yes, it is true that the majority of Muslims around the world are peace-loving and do not subscribe to the political ideology and its advance of Sharia law we call “radical Islam.”
But for the establishment media to continue to deny reality and browbeat the growing number of Americans who recognize the threat will only serve to further marginalize the media. After all, a CNN poll found that 52 percent of Democrats oppose building the mosque at Ground Zero. So are half of all Democrats bigots too?
What’s worse, the establishment media is doing great damage to America’s security. They have become a mouthpiece for those in the Muslim community who are anything but moderates, giving them political cover they do not merit. By aligning themselves with the self-proclaimed but phony moderates like Imam Feisal Rauf, CAIR, ISNA and other manifestations of the Muslim Brotherhood — the establishment media has marginalized the many thousands of authentic moderate and reformist Muslims who genuinely seek peace and are patriotic American citizens.
There is a way forward that will ensure both the safety of all our citizens and a genuine rapprochement between Islam and the American people.
1) The establishment media and the US government must end their dangerous romance with the phony moderates who engage in one obnoxious provocation after another, the latest being this project to build a mosque at Ground Zero.
2) In order for the establishment media and the US government to redeem themselves and to re-establish trust with the American people on this issue, they must seek out and encourage Islam’s true moderates and reformers. They are there. They are waiting for an invitation.
Brigitte Gabriel is a terrorism analyst and the author of two New York Times best sellers: “Because They Hate” and “They Must Be Stopped.” She is President and CEO of ACT for America.org
