Once again the world is given an example of terrorism committed in the name of Islam and once again foolish westerners race to absolve Islam for the murderous assault. For instance, before the smoke had cleared in the assault on the French magazine publisher, the Democrat’s spokesman, Howard Dean, insisted that the murderers aren’t really Muslims.
Dean, a former Vermont Governor and the recent Democrat National Committee Chairman, appeared on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” only hours after the deadly attacks in France on the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. In his comments, Dean insisted that the murderers aren’t Muslim.
“You know, this is a chronic problem,” Dean said on Wednesday morning. “I stopped calling these people Muslim terrorists. They’re about as Muslim as I am. I mean, they have no respect for whatever anybody else’s life. That’s not what the Koran says. You know, Europe has an enormous radical problem. I think ISIS is a cult, not an Islamist cult. I think it’s a cult. I think you got to deal with these people.”
He continued saying,
“You know, the interesting thing here is we talked about guns the last time regarding the United States, regarding how guns get in the hands of the kind of people that kill the two police officers here two weeks ago — France has tremendous gun control laws, yet, these people are able to get Kalashnikovs. So, this is really complicated stuff. I think you have to treat these people basically as mass murders. But I do not think we should accord them any particular religious respects because I think whatever they are claiming, motivation clearly is a twisted cultish mind.”
Dean wasn’t alone in his refusal to acknowledge the obvious that this is Islam-based terrorism.
Not long after Dean made his comments on MSNBC, White House spokesman Josh Earnest was on CNN refusing to call these attacks an act of terror.
CNN anchor Chris Cuomo pressed Earnest on whether or not the al Qaeda-linked attack was an act of terror and Earnest demurred from that characterization.
“I think, based on what we know right now, it does seem like that is what we’re confronting here,” Earnest told Cuomo. “And this is an act of violence that we certainly do condemn. And, you know, if based on this investigation it turns out to be an act of terrorism then we would condemn that in the strongest possible terms, too.”
There is no doubt that this was terror. And who, exactly, does Earnest need to tell him if it “turns out to be an act of terrorism”?
All of this is just more proof that Democrats and the left are still ensconced firmly in their fantasy land where Islam is innocent of any acts of terror and that the millions–factually millions–of Muslims across the world that kill in the name of Islam aren’t really Muslims.
Listen, I agree with characterizations of groups as “not really being” worthy representatives of a faith. For instance, the cretins in the Westboro Baptist Church are legitimately said to be “not real Christians.”
We can say something like this because the idiots in the Westboro “church” are tens of people in a religion of millions of people. Their actions are extreme and not representative at all of Baptists.
But these terrorists in Islam are not out of the ordinary. Literally millions of Muslims today are committing acts of terror on a daily basis. Terrorism is wholly representative of Islam.
Terrorism is not solely representative of Islam, certainly. There are millions of Muslims who are entirely peaceful, to be sure. But there are millions of others across the world who feel that terror is wholly in keeping with and part of their religion. The number of Muslims who fully accept terrorism as part of their religion amount to far too many to dismiss them as wholly representative of their religion.
Those who say that terrorists are “not real Muslims” are foolish. Terrorism is 100 percent representative of Islam.
As to the cartoon that sparked this attack, the French magazine’s name is Charlie Hebdo and the artist that drew the cartoon is Stéphane Charbonnier. The artist was one of those killed in the attack on the magazine’s offices because… you know… Islam is the “religion of peace,” and all.
Warner Todd Huston’s thoughtful commentary, sometimes irreverent often historically based, is featured on many websites such as Breitbart.com, among many, many others. He has also written for several history magazines, has appeared on numerous TV and radio shows.
