After being buffeted yesterday with opinion pieces demanding better gun control in the US, we now know that the suspects in the San Bernardino shootings also accumulated a stash of pipe bombs. Would more stringent gun control prevent terrorists from killing innocent people with pipe bombs? I don't think so. If terrorists want to kill people, they will find the means to do it. But wait! Perhaps I shouldn't use the word "terrorist," inasmuch as the "progressive" media has informed us that the suspects' motive was "unclear" or "unknown." In the same vein, we also shouldn't utter the words "radical Islam," even when it bites us in the arse.
President Obama declared on Thursday:
"But we don’t know why they did it. We don’t know at this point the extent of their plans. We do not know their motivations."
"We do not know their motivations"? Maybe you don't, Mr. President, but the rest of us certainly do. Maybe it's time you took an extended golf vacation and leave the reins of government to Joe Biden.
In his latest Washington Post opinion piece entitled "Anti-Muslim rhetoric isn’t brave," Fareed Zakaria declares:
"While I believe that Muslims do bear a responsibility to speak up, non-Muslims also have a responsibility not to make assumptions about them based on such a small minority. Individuals should be judged as individuals and not placed under suspicion for some 'group characteristic.' It is dehumanizing and un-American to do otherwise."
A "small minority"? I repeat what I stated yesterday:
As reported by the Pew Research Center in an August 30, 2011 article entitled "Muslim Americans: No Signs of Growth in Alienation or Support for Extremism," eight percent of US Muslims believe that suicide bombing can "often/sometimes" be justified. Now that's a relief! If you randomly place 100 American adult Muslims in a room, only eight of them think that it's "often/sometimes" justified to blow you to bits.
And in a June 2015 poll of 600 Muslim-Americans, The Polling Company determined:
- 29 percent strongly or somewhat agreed that "violence against those that insult the prophet Mohammad, the Qur'an, or Islamic faith is sometimes acceptable."
- 25 percent strongly or somewhat agreed that "Violence against Americans here in the United States can be justified as part of the global jihad."
- 19 percent believed that "the use of violence in the United States is justified in order to make shariah the law of the land in this country."
Given these numbers, why should anyone be surprised by the Fort Hood shooting, the Boston Marathon bombing, the Chattanooga shooting, and yesterday's atrocity? I would further observe that Muslims comprise less than one percent of America's population.
Yes, the US has a problem with radical Islam, and there can be no answer to the problem until America's political leadership and "progressive" media acknowledge its existence.
Sorry, Fareed. Like it or not, radical Islam cannot be papered over.
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