It didn’t take long for liberals to throw up their shields after a man ran over and stabbed 11 people at Ohio State University.
They would prefer you not refer to him as a Somali, a Muslim or a terrorist — because he’s all three.
Abdul Razak Ali Artan, 18, ran his car into a group of people and went on a stabbing spree on Ohio State’s campus Nov. 28 before being shot dead by OSU police officer Alan Horujko. (RELATED: Meet The Hero Who Killed OSU Attacker Abdul Razak Ali Artan)
Two days after the attack, President-elect Donald Trump said Artan “should not have been in our country.”
Slate, in an article titled “Somali Refugees Are Not A Threat,” shot back at Trump and blamed midwestern Americans for radicalizing Somali refugees:
Muslim, black, and culturally foreign, it’s hard to imagine a group of people more likely to be marginalized in a Midwestern U.S. city. Add to that the language barriers and personal traumas that many Somali refugees face, and you have what seems like the perfect recipe for poverty, alienation, and ultimately, radicalization. No one who understands the situation can be shocked that a few Somali Americans have turned to violence, or that this violence has taken a form that resembles Islamic terrorism.
Slate went further, pointing out that none of the mass killings in the U.S. have been perpetrated by Somali refugees — which is only true because Artan and St. Cloud, Minn., Somali terrorist Dahir Ahmed Adan didn’t manage to stab anyone to death. Adan stabbed eight people in a mall Sept. 9 before being shot and killed by an off-duty police officer. The FBI charged 10 Somali Americans in 2016 for allegedly conspiring to join Islamic State. Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab slaughtered 67 and injured upwards of 175 at Westgate mall in Kenya in 2013. Twenty died and 17 were wounded when the group attacked a restaurant in Somalia’s capital of Mogadishu.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest refused to call the OSU attack “radical Islam,” instead saying increased suspicion of a particular religion will lead to more attacks.
“It is way too early to definitively link the OSU attack to terrorism,” Quartz wrote in a piece urging President Barack Obama and Trump to stay out of Somalia. “Lawmakers should instead explore whether increased US military operations in a country struggling with massive political and economic strife really is the most effective way to stamp out terrorism.”
“Think of the pain he [Artan] must have been in,” OSU diversity officer Stephanie Clemons Thompson wrote on Facebook; students are now petitioning for her removal.
Artan was a Somali refugee who fled to Pakistan in 2007 and then to the U.S. in 2014. He was a student at Ohio State and a permanent legal resident. He went on a rant on Facebook approximately three minutes before the attack, writing, “I can’t take it anymore. America! Stop interfering with other countries, especially the Muslim Ummah. We are not weak. We are not weak, remember that,” according to ABC News. “Sick and tired of seeing my fellow Muslim brothers and sisters being killed and tortured EVERYWHERE. Willing to kill a billion infidels in retribution for a single DISABLED Muslim.”
He called al-Qaida terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki a hero and stated that, “If you want us Muslims to stop carrying lone wolf attacks, then make peace. We will not let you sleep unless you give peace to the Muslims.” The Islamic State came out Nov. 29 to claim responsiblity for the attack, calling Artan a “soldier of the Islamic State.” ISIS also claimed responsiblity for the St. Cloud terror attack.
Ironically, Artan had previously complained to the school’s newspaper that he felt uncomfortable praying in the open because of the media’s portrayal of Muslims as violent.
“I wanted to pray in the open, but I was kind of scared with everything going on in the media,” he stated. “I’m a Muslim, it’s not what the media portrays me to be.”
Liberals attacked Trump in November for talking about the problems Minnesota faces with unvetted Somali refugees. “Trump equates Somali refugees in Minnesota to terrorists,” ThinkProgress wrote. Roughly 7 percent of the world’s Somali refugees reside in the U.S., according to the United Nations. The Somali Community Association of Ohio estimates there are at least 38,000 Somali refugees in Columbus, Ohio.
Liberal Islamic denialism means they will point at America, Trump, Republicans, racism, Islamaphobia and Christians as the culprits because it is impossible for them to admit that radical Islam exists. No matter how bad the attacks get, it appears it can never be a Muslim’s fault.
Artan’s identity was stripped away and replaced with the politically correct narrative. He was willing to kill “a billion infidels,” but that doesn’t prove the OSU attack was Islamic terrorism.
The Minnesota Somali Americans that were found guilty of trying to join ISIS were not radical, they were beaten down and crushed by a society that wasn’t welcoming enough.
Adan reportedly shouted “Allahu akbar” and asked someone at the St. Cloud mall if they were Muslim before stabbing them, but that doesn’t mean it had anything to do with Islam.
Their actions aren’t representative of the whole because they’re just a few among 1.6 billion Muslims.
It would take a miraculous act to change this: In the identity politics of the left, Islam is sacred.