President Trump last week retweeted some videos posted by England’s Britain First party, and the usual suspects fell all over themselves condemning the president in an orgy of mass virtue-signaling. The usual question-begging epithets flew thick and fast: “racist,” “fascist,” “hateful,” “bigotry,” Islamophobic,” “extremist,” “far-right,” all the dull clichés trotted out to mask the chronic appeasement of Islamic jihad on the part of bipartisan internationalists.
The uproar over Trump’s actions confirms that the willful blindness of most Western leaders over the reality of Islamic violence continues to weaken our response to the jihadist threat.
The three videos that Trump retweeted showed examples of Muslim confessional intolerance and violence ubiquitous for fourteen centuries: “Muslim migrant beats up Dutch boy on crutches!” “Muslim Destroys a Statue of Virgin Mary!” and “Islamist mob pushes teenage boy off roof and beats him to death!” Sadly, such incidents have become dog-bites-man stories, and similarly predictable are the responses to them. All were marked by the Western preemptive cringe typical of those who refuse to confront reality.
Consider the American politicians, especially Republican NeverTrumpers, who could not resist taking a potshot at the president and brandishing their moral superiority. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham claimed that Trump was “legitimizing religious bigotry” by retweeting the videos. He then added, “We need Muslim allies in the war on terror. I can only imagine how some of our Muslim allies must feel when the president gives legitimacy to it.”
How exactly is showing factual incidents of violence “legitimizing religious bigotry”? So the Muslim who beat up the boy on crutches was not a migrant, but a Dutch citizen. The point remains: Islam views violence against infidels as divinely sanctioned, thus legitimizing any violence. Do we have to repeat for the Nth time the Koranic commands, those uncreated words of Allah, like “slay the idolaters wherever you find them,” “do not take the Jews and Christians as friends,” “fight those who do not believe in Allah,” “fight those of the unbelievers who are near to you and let them find in you hardness,” or “I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore, strike off their heads”? Are any of the incidents in the videos––and in those circulated by ISIS and other jihadist groups–– incompatible with these commands? Are any of them different from the thousands and thousands of similar lethal actions––over 32,000 just since 9/11–– that we have witnessed for nearly two decades, and that have marked the history of Islam from its beginnings in the 7th century, when Mohammed beheaded the 500 Jewish men of the Banu Qurayza?
