When there’s a terrorist act committed by Muslims, the MSM and the political Establishment immediately get worried about “backlash.” They rush round to the nearest mosque to ask the local preachers of hate if they’re worried about it. The most notorious example: President George W. Bush, who appeared at the Islamic Center in Washington DC on September 17, 2001—six days after 9/11—to declare that “Islam is Peace”. The London Bridge attack is producing a similar reaction.James's irrefutable point brings to mind something Mark Steyn wrote in the Wall Street Journal 11 years ago (with my emphasis):
The old definition of a nanosecond was the gap between the traffic light changing in New York and the first honk from a car behind. The new definition is the gap between a terrorist bombing and the press release from an Islamic lobby group warning of a backlash against Muslims. In most circumstances, it would be considered appallingly bad taste to deflect attention from an actual "hate crime" by scaremongering about a purely hypothetical one. Needless to say, there is no campaign of Islamophobic hate crimes. If anything, the West is awash in an epidemic of self-hate crimes. A commenter on Tim Blair's Web site in Australia summed it up in a note-perfect parody of a Guardian headline: "Muslim Community Leaders Warn of Backlash from Tomorrow Morning's Terrorist Attack." Those community leaders have the measure of us.
[It's the Demography, Stupid, January 4, 2006]
