Why Does the Left Continue to Insist that Islamic Terrorism Has Nothing to Do with Islam?

[Valin]

National Review:

Jonah Goldberg

November 21, 2015

 

Dear Reader (Including those of you stunned by the news that Charlie Sheen has a sexually transmitted disease. Not since Jim J. Bullock announced he was gay have I been more shocked),

 

If you Google “Christian terrorism,” you’re probably a jackass to begin with. But if you do — bidden not by your own drive to jackassery but by the natural curiosity inspired by this “news”letter — you’ll find lots of left-wing trollery about how the worst terrorist attacks on American soil have been committed by Christians. Much of it is tendentious, question-begging twaddle. But I really don’t want to waste a lot of time on whether Tim McVeigh was a Christian or not (he really wasn’t).

 

What I find interesting is that many of the same people who clutch their pearls at the mere suggestion that Islamic terrorism has anything to do with — oh, what’s the word again? — oh right: Islam, seem to have no problem making the case that “Christian terrorism” is like a real thing. Remember how so many liberals loved — loved — Obama’s sophomoric and insidious tirade about not getting on our “high horses” about ISIS’s atrocities in the here and now because medieval Christians did bad things a thousand years ago? They never seem to think that argument through. Leaving out the ass-aching stupidity of the comparison, it actually concedes the very point Obama never wants to concede. By laying the barbaric sins of Christians a thousand years ago at the feet of Christians today, he implicitly tags Muslims with the barbarism committed in their name today.

 

Now, I see no need to wade too deeply into the theology here, but I think I am on very solid ground when I say that Islamic terrorism draws more easily and deeply from the Koran than Tim McVeigh drew from the Christian Bible. Of course, you’re free to disagree. In a free society, everybody has the right to be wrong in their opinions. (But don’t tell anyone at Yale that.)

 

(Snip)

 

I should say that I am perfectly willing to concede that Obama has some good points on his side in the debate over Syrian refugees. Tourism rules, visa waivers, and homegrown radicalism will likely deliver more terror attacks to our shores than the refugees currently in the pipeline. But that doesn’t make the concerns about refugees unserious, illegitimate, or bigoted. Obama has complete confidence in the screening procedures. Well, okay. He also had complete confidence in the IRS, the VA, and the team building Healthcare.gov. When Obama declares complete confidence in a government agency, that’s a good time to buy gold.

 

But his remarks this week should remove all doubt that he’s not interested in persuading anybody. He’s interested instead in propping up the walls of his comfortable ideological bunker, where he’s a hero beset by irrational, cowardly, and evil men. I for one am sick of seeing this country go down the tubes just to salve the ego of this vain and cynical man.