The allegedly growing domestic Muslim threat – Why, after a decade, would American Muslims suddenly become radicalized?
By There is clearly a concerted effort by the Government to claim loudly that the threat posed by radicalized American Muslims is increasing. Last week, The Los Angeles Times published a lengthy, scary story under the headline ”U.S. sees homegrown Muslim extremism as rising threat,” claiming that “Anti-terrorism officials and experts see signs of accelerated radicalization among American Muslims.”
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano warned this month: ”Home-based terrorism is here.”
When justifying his Afghanistan escalation at West Point, Obama warned of “extremists within our borders who were sent here from the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan to commit new acts of terror.”
And strangely, on Saturday, two articles with virtually identical storylines appeared — one in The Washington Post and the other in The New York Times — warning that American Muslims, for the first time, are now becoming a radicalized threat in the way European Muslims are.
These claims are being made based exclusively on the basis of a handful of recent episodes involving American Muslims accused of having links to Al Qaeda and/or the Taliban. There is no data whatsoever offered to corroborate the claim of a “trend.”
Given the dangerous inherent in such claims — as well as the motives the Government generally has in disseminating such claims and the motive it specificaly has when escalating a war — far more than a few anecdotes ought to be required before any of this is believed.
What’s most striking about these “warnings” is that they virtually never examine the reasons why this would be happening. Why, after all this time, would American Muslims suddenly be more willing to engage in violence against the U.S.?
To his credit, Scott Shane devoted several paragraphs of his NYT article to addressing this question, and what he finds is both highly significant and highly unsurprising:
. . . Click Here to read the complete article .
Tags: Afghanistan, American Muslims, European Muslims, HOMELAND SECURITY, Janet Napolitano, Obama, Pakistan, Scott Shane, West Point
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