The smoke hasn’t even cleared from the airport in Brussels, and already the press is issuing its typical lament: This will only stoke Europe’s right wing and spread rampant Islamophobia.
NBC’s Richard Engel complained on the “TODAY” program, “We’re already seeing the rise of the right wing. We’re already seeing rise of hate attacks, where people will use the kind of terrorist attacks, these kinds of incidents, to vilify all of the Muslim community. Which, of course, only makes the situation worse, because then people feel isolated, ostracized, ghettoized, and they retreat into their own communities.” NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, cited gains for right-wing parties in recent German regional elections.
But what would be unreasonable about Europeans responding to Islamic jihad movements by restraining the immigration of large groups of Muslim refugees? Why isn’t it considered irrational to carefully decide who’s allowed to enter your country? Why can’t people imagine that restricting immigration might prevent terrorists from getting in?
Earlier in the show, NBC correspondent Tom Costello (who has family members in Belgium) spoke for those who are seen as right-wing people who vilify Muslims. It was a welcome departure from the norm.
“I think if you talk to Belgians, and I know many of them because they’re family members, they will tell you that over the last 20-25 years they have felt like they are losing their country,” he said. “They have felt like because Belgium has such an open immigration policy over the last half-century, in which they have really allowed almost anybody, especially from these areas that are now breeding terrorism, they’ve allowed these people to come in as refugees, and yet, many of them are not being thoroughly vetted.”
His opinion was the exception to the rule. By midmorning, NBC’s Savannah Guthrie asked Christopher Dickey of The Daily Beast how Europe can balance a natural fear with a desire for normalcy. Dickey responded, “There already was rampant Islamophobia in this part of the world. And now you have a situation where people who were not inclined to look suspiciously at Arabs and Muslims, now they’re terrified.”
Dickey also wrote about the matter on The Daily Beast. He references Islamic radical Abu Musab al-Suri, who laid out a strategy to go after Europe 10 years ago, calling it the “soft underbelly of the West.” Al-Suri believed that acts of terror would create divisions, dissent and Islamophobia in society, leading to “a civil war where the forces of Islam eventually would be victorious.” In other words, Dickey and the media believe that it is ideal for ISIS if the right wing takes the bait and unleashes division and hate.
With that, you arrive at the Obamaland foreign policy: Decry and do nothing.
It’s not a hate crime to resist this unholy war on innocent civilians; it’s a crime not to. Our national media is an obstacle to getting the upper hand in this battle — it is constantly kvetching about how these attacks are somehow more unfair to the public-relations image of Islam than they are to the people who’ve been blown to pieces in an airport or train station.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
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