“Islam has a terrorism problem.”
Why is that sentence so hard to say?
It’s an obvious and indisputable fact. And yet in the aftermath of yet another Islam-inspired terror attack — the worst mass-casualty shooting in U.S. history — politicians and the press twist themselves into rhetorical pretzels to avoid even suggesting it.
President Obama left out the words “Islam” and “Muslim” entirely from his remarks to the nation after the Islamic State-inspired attack on a gay nightclub. This is akin to a speech following a Ku Klux Klan attack on a black church that fails to mention race.
To say such a thing just makes you look stupid. Or in the case of a smart guy like President Obama, it makes you look like someone who’s pretending to be stupid. Which he seems to be doing.
Islam has a problem with terror committed in its name that no other major religion shares at the moment. Period. End of story. Forget trying to change the subject by injecting the Crusades into the conversation (a favorite of President Obama’s). No need for the shameless lying from Hillary Clinton (“Muslims have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism”) because nobody believes that you believe it, anyway.
Why not just tell the truth?
Defenders of this particularly inept form of political correctness argue that admitting the truth about Islam would undermine the Obama administration’s strategy for dealing with Islamist violence. And that “strategy” would be …?
Exactly.
Besides, it’s idiotic to think that the very Muslims on the front line of the ongoing civil war inside their faith don’t appreciate the distinction between “Islamists” and the wider Muslim world. Acknowledging Islam’s problems is unlikely to offend the Muslims who are fighting against it and dying because of it.
The “news” that Islam has a violence issue may not have reached the White House or editorial page of the New York Times, but it’s old news on the streets of Beirut, Baghdad and Kabul.
There is no downside for American politicians admitting the obvious about Islam, but there is a definite downside from the continuous denials: It feeds right into the Trump narrative of American weakness.
One of the most powerful pro-Trump arguments is that everyone else in American politics is too gutless and politically correct to tell the common-sense truth about the current state of Islam.
There is an incredibly easy way to undermine Trump’s case: Tell the truth about Islam. President Obama could give a speech tomorrow, surrounded by Muslim victims of Islamist violence, and talk about the divide within the Muslim world and America’s plans to help the good guys beat the bad guys (OK, so he’d have to make up that last part, but still).
Instead, Obama handed Trump a huge gift. He went on national TV, in the wake of the worst attack since 9/11, and did exactly what Trump said he’d do: Wimp out. Sugar coat. Avoid the problem. Then, to make it even better for Trump, Obama pushed gun control again — showing he’s not afraid of controversy, he’s just afraid to talk about Islam.
Thus far, Clinton’s followed the same strategy. The result is that the only political leader who’s not blatantly lying to America about the terrorism that’s killing our citizens is Donald Trump. What better way is there to get more Americans to take him seriously?
You may say Trump’s comments are crazy, but how is “ban all Muslims” any more crazy than “Muslims have no connection whatsoever to terrorism?” It’s not. And if you give voters the choice of two crazies, they’ll take “the one less likely to get me killed at an Orlando nightclub.”
We should be far past the point where talking about Islam and terrorism is controversial. It’s like talking about Elton John possibly being gay. Do you really think there’s anyone left to be surprised?
Michael Graham is the Washington Examiner’s multimedia director. Follow him on Twitter at @iammgraham
