Putting Islamism on the defensive
by Jonathan Tobin
Nov. 16, 2005: With Saudi Accountability Act, Americans take halting steps to face the enemy? The streets of Parisian suburbs have been burning this week. It remains to be seen just how far-reaching the impact of a virtual revolt against the authority of the French republic by North African Muslim immigrants will be.There are, no doubt, some Americans who will point to the spectacle of a virtual intifada in the heart of European civilization, and say that Americans will ignore the peril of Islamic fundamentalism at their peril. But such comparisons will be, at best, inappropriate.
French leaders have ignored the festering problem of having so large an immigrant group that has faced discrimination while also showing little inclination to integrate into an insular French culture. Perhaps they are waking up to the realization that appeasing them solely by support of Middle Eastern dictators and hostility to Israel won't work.
Here in the United States, where the majority of immigrants, be they Muslim or any other religious or ethnic minority, are desirous of assimilation and generally welcomed into society, there is no comparison with the situation in France.
But while Europeans are only just now realizing the challenge that Islamist radicals pose to their nations, Americans had their minds concentrated on the threat more than four years ago with the 9/11 attacks. The question here is not one of riots, but of whether the consensus that coalesced behind a war against terrorism is there anymore.
IS APATHY GROWING?
On that front, there is both good news and bad news.On the negative side of the ledger, years of indecisive war in Iraq have helped chip away at not only support for the administration, but also the notion that America must try to fight Islamists and hostile Arab/Muslim regimes on their own turf rather than wait for them here.
More troubling is the notion, promulgated by the radical left, but seeping into mainstream debate, that the entire concept of the war on terror is merely a Bush administration stratagem to hoodwink the nation.
The lack of further catastrophic attacks since Sept. 11 (even though the atrocities in Madrid in 2004 and London this past summer should remind us that Al Qaeda is alive and well) seems to have similarly undermined the notion that what is going is a real war rather than a one-time failure to catch a few evil terrorists.
As Steven Emerson, director of the Investigative Project and an expert on the question of Islamist terror, puts it, "As law enforcement successfully prevents acts of terror, our ability to mobilize the public to see the threat is diminished."
As Emerson sees it, the U.S. government has gone a long way from the apathy of the 1990s when America was used by a variety of Islamic terror groups as a virtual "safe haven," a moral outrage that should still stick in our throats. Since then, the Justice Department has acted to close down "charities" whose real purpose was to fund terrorists such as Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Fundraisers for these killers have been put on trial and convicted. But the battle's far from won.
Domestic radical Islamic groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations are still seen by many, especially in the mainstream media, as legitimate voices of American Muslims and Arabs. Such groups have been allowed to advocate extremism below the radar screen while pretending to be reasonable when the cameras are running.
- The Pied Piper of Islamic Terrorism (moved)
- Multiculturalism and the Self-Liquidation of Europe
- Putting Islamism on the defensive
- Twisting history (about Muslims)
- Farewell to Europe
- Why the Islamists may well succeed
- Reflections on the (Muslim) Revolution in France
- Muslim rampage not about poverty, but Western weakness
- Jihadism and denial
- Muslim Attack on France
- Wake up, Europe, you've a war on your hands
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