At 9:52 a.m. on Monday morning, a silver Honda jumped a curb at Ohio State University and plowed directly into a crowd of students, sending bodies flying through the air. As students rushed to help, a young Somali immigrant, Abdul Razak Ali Ratan, got out of the car and began attacking horrified students with a butcher knife. All told, eleven people were wounded before a university police officer shot and killed Ratan, ending the attack.
Ratan is the third Muslim immigrant to mount a mass stabbing attack in 2016. The first occurred at an Israeli-owned deli in Columbus, Ohio, the second at a mall in Saint Cloud, Minn., and the third Monday at Ohio State. The attacks together wounded 25 people. The latest stabbing comes on the heels of Afghan immigrant Ahman Khan Rahami’s September bomb attacks in New York and New Jersey that left 29 injured.
The toll continues. Muslim immigrants Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev killed five Americans and wounded 280 in the Boston Marathon bombing and subsequent shootouts. Muslim immigrant Muhammad Abdulazeez killed five men and wounded two in attacks on military recruiting stations in Chattanooga, Tenn. Muslim immigrant Tashfeen Malik accompanied her first-generation Muslim-American husband to attack a Christmas party in San Bernardino, Calif., killing 14 and wounding 22. First generation Muslim-American Omar Mateen — son of Afghan immigrants — carried out the deadliest domestic terror attack since 9/11, killing 49 and wounding 53 at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub.
And if you think these are the only terrorist immigrants — or terrorist children of immigrants — you’re sadly mistaken. The Heritage Foundation has maintained a comprehensive database of terror plots since 9/11, a database that includes foiled attacks. The number of Muslim immigrants involved is truly sobering. For every successful attack, there are multiple unsuccessful plots, including attacks that could have cost hundreds of American lives.
After all these incidents, can we finally have an honest conversation about Muslim immigration — especially Muslim immigration from jihadist conflict zones?
RELATED: It’s Time We Faced the Facts about the Muslim World
When we survey the American experience since 9/11, two undeniable truths emerge, and it’s past time that we grapple head-on with them. First, the vast majority of Muslim immigrants — no matter their country of origin — are not terrorists. They won’t attack anyone, they won’t participate in terrorist plots, and they abhor terrorism. Some even provide invaluable information in the fight against jihad. That’s the good news.
The bad news is the second truth: Some Muslim immigrants (or their children) will either attempt to commit mass murder or will actually succeed in killing and wounding Americans by the dozens. All groups of immigrants contain some number of criminals. But not all groups of immigrants contain meaningful numbers of terrorists. This one does. It’s simply a fact.
Moreover, there isn’t an even geographic distribution of terrorists. We don’t have as many terrorist immigrants from Indonesia, India, or Malaysia as we do from Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, or from the conflict zones in the Middle East. It’s much less risky to bring into the country a cardiologist from Jakarta than a refugee from Kandahar.