Given last Friday’s Islamic terrorist attacks in Paris that murdered at least 129 people and injured at least 352, it is worth reflecting on a brief history of Democrat denial of the connection between Islam and Islamic terrorism.
The Obama Administration described the Islamic terror attack at Fort Hood as “workplace violence.” Following Nidal Hassan’s mass shooting in which 13 people were murdered and 32 injured, the federal government deemed the attack “workplace violence.” After a five-year battle, the victims were made eligible for reception of Purple Heart medals related financial benefits. The administration claimed that describing this attack as “terrorism” would have benefited
The Obama Administration scrubbed counterterrorism training materials deemed “offensive” to Muslims. Judicial Watch obtained documents revealing that the FBI purged anti-terrorism curricula determined to be “offensive” by unidentified “subject matter experts” in 2011. Materials removed included references linking the Muslim Brotherhood to terrorism, connections made between Al-Qaeda and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and generalized physical descriptions of terrorist profiles as “young male immigrants of Middle Eastern appearance.”
CIA Director and Obama appointee John Brennan refuses to describe ISIS/ISIL as “Islamic extremists.” Speaking with Chris Wallace in March, Brennan went to great pains to avoid describing Islamic terrorists as such. Asked to describe the ideology fuelling ISIS/ISIL, Brennan said, “It is not a religious ideology.” Brennan said that such a description would be granting these groups “religious legitimacy.” In 2010, Brennan expressly rejected the terms “Jihadists” and “Islamists,” stating that Jihad is a holy struggle and that describing Islamic terrorists with such terms unfairly slanders Muslims and Islam. In March, Brennan said that ISIS/ISIL is “not Islamic.”
President Barack Obama refuses to use the term “radical Islamic terrorism.” An ongoing theme of Obama’s rhetoric, he refuses to use the term Islam or its derivatives to describe the ideology animating the murder operations of Islamic terrorists. Contradictingly, Obama told Fareed Zakaria that he doesn’t “quibble with labels.” He also said, “99.9% of Muslims are looking for the same thing (Americans) are looking for.” Obama’s statement is incompatible with studies and polls painting a different picture of attitudes among Muslims around the world. The Daily Wire’s own Ben Shapiro dismantled this talking point last year in October.
“It is not a religious ideology.”
CIA Director John Brennan on ISIS
The three Democratic presidential candidates also refuse to use the term “radical Islamic terrorism.” During the CBS-hosted Democratic debate this past Saturday, moderator John Dickerson asked the candidates to respond to Marco Rubio’s statement, “We are at war with radical Islam.” Martin O’Malley, Bernie Sanders, and Hillary Clinton echoed one another in framing the term as an unfair grouping of all Muslims as Jihadists, ignoring the qualifying adjective “radical.”
Bernie Sanders says climate change is a major driver of Islamic terrorism. During the same debate, Sanders was asked if he stands by earlier statements he’s made about “climate change” being the America’s primary threat to national security. Sanders doubled down, “Climate change is directly related to the growth of terrorism.” Sanders tripled down yesterday in an interview with Dickerson for Face the Nation. He said increases in “drought, flooding, and extreme weather disturbances” will lead to greater scarcity of natural resources, and cause unrest. Sanders made no mention of the ideological and religious underpinnings of Islamic terrorism.
John Kerry describes Islamic terrorism as “violent extremism.” Toeing the same rhetorical line of divorcing Islamic terrorism from its religious underpinnings, Kerry also refuses to use the term “radical Islamic terrorism.” He says that use of such a term unfairly lumps all Muslims into the category of Islamic terrorists. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in January, Kerry warned of the rise of “Islamophobia” should the wrong language be used to describe Islamic terrorism.
Chris Cuomo laments that Islamic terrorists are linked to Islam. Cuomo has many times worried that Islamic terrorism would be unfairly associated with all Muslims, and cautioned his audience against such generalizations. He went so far as to spread doubt over the anti-Semitic motivations of the Islamic terrorist attacks in Paris in January, in which four Jews were murdered in a kosher supermarket. Cuomo also incorrectly described one of the Islamic terrorists as “African American,” avoiding the part of the Amedy Coulibaly’s identity most relevant to his motivation. In August, Cuomo inadvertently explained why he and many other left-wingers and Democrats struggle to connect Islamic terrorism with Islam, saying, “This feeds the impression that these Muslims are animals, savages, and their faith makes them that way. It feeds an impression of what Islam is.” Cuomo thinks ordinary Americans are unable to discern between radicals and other Muslims. Ordinary Americans must therefore be shielded from information relating to the religious ideology of Islamic terrorism, lest they be unable to grasp nuance.
Dean Obeidallah says, “There is no such thing as radical Islam.” Obeidallah told Ed Schultz in July that radical Islam does not exist. Acknowledging that radical Muslims and Muslim terrorists exist, Obeidallah still insisted, “There’s only one Islam.” Two months earlier, he dismissed “radical Islam” on CNN, describing it as “a made-up idea”. On Twitter, Obeidallah blamed the West for the most recent Islamic terrorism in Paris while denying the existence of any religious motivation on the part of the attackers.