No Connection

There is an otherworldly, almost surreal, reflexiveness with which progressives react when an obvious act of Islamic terror occurs. It happened in Cologne, 12 days ago, when progressive city officials tried hard to minimize or bury brutal attacks on random women by close to a thousand Muslim Males on New Years Eve. It happened again in Philadelphia immediately after an attack on a Philadelphia police officer by a devout follower of ISIS. The attacker fires 13 shots at the officer, hitting him three times. The officer, even after being hit, returned fire and pursued the attacker who ran. He was captured a short time later.

Dorothy Rabinowitz takes up the story:

The wounded shooter, [Philadelphia Police] Commissioner Ross revealed, told police after his capture that he had mounted the attack in the name of Islam, that he believes that “the police defend laws that are contrary to Islam.” The man [once captured] apparently wanted to talk only about his devotion to Islam.

Undaunted by anything he’d heard so far, [Democrat] Mayor [Jim] Kenny then came to the microphone and declared: “In no way, shape or form does anybody in this room believe that Islam or the teaching of Islam” had anything to do with the attack. “This was a criminal with a stolen gun.”

Mr. Kenny’s tone was fervent. Out of this event—involving a murderous assault on a police officer, and a heroic response by that officer—the mayor, awash in excitation, had divined what was, for him, the most important concern of this day. Namely, persuading citizens that this attack had nothing to do with allegiance to Islam.

It added to the surreal wonders of this scene that, immediately after the mayor’s pronouncement, the commander of the police department’s homicide unit calmly took the microphone. Capt. James Clark reported that the shooter (later identified as 30-year-old Edward Archer) had said, repeatedly, that he followed Allah, that he pledged allegiance to Islamic State and “That is the reason I did what I did.”

The mayor’s comments, so bizarre in their determined denial of the deluge of facts delivered by top police officials standing next to him, were, nonetheless, familiar enough. Americans have learned to expect, after every Islamist terror attack, lectures instructing them that such assaults should in no way be connected to Islamic faith of any kind.

Like a good progressive soldier, Mayor Kenny followed in the footsteps of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders in his effort to deflect any possible notion that an attack might be the result of religious fervor driven by radical Islam. After all, ISIS and other Islamists and those who follow them have absolutely, positively, irrefutably in "no shape or form" no connection whatsoever with Islam. This mind-bending declaration by legions of progressives is an insult to the intelligence of the listener, a travesty when spoken by a public official in direct contravention of the facts, and a subtle implication that Americans can't be trusted with the truth.

Even worse, the lie and corresponding insult to the incredulous listener is amplified by the follow-on accusation that those who reject it are (1) too frightened to think clearly, (2) Islamophobic, or (3) bigoted.

Tonight at the State of the Union address, I suspect that we'll hear Barack Obama tell us that fears of "violent extremism" (no defined adjectives are allowed) are overblown; that those who state otherwise do so for political purposes, and that we must protect the Muslim community in the United States and worldwide.

One has to wonder why this president doesn't ask the Muslim community to help protect other diverse communities under attach by groups like ISIS around the world—oops, almost forgot, Obama has already told us that ISIS has absolutely, positively, irrefutably in "no shape or form" no connection whatsoever with the Muslim community.