We are told racism is everywhere. And so is sexism, homophobia, jingoism, Islamophobia, and anti-LGBTQism. There may be more isms I’m unaware of. The left seems to invent new isms to attach to victimhood with increasing regularity.
These isms are kind of like the force in the Star Wars movies. You never get to see the force, you just know it’s there because Luke can make a light saber hover or Vader can choke a dude out from across the room. There is never a scene in which Han Solo opens a panel in his spaceship, globs of glowing force ooze out, and Chewbacca howls in agony before fetching a mop and bucket to clean up the mess.
These isms are never really there. We’re supposed to believe they are there because life choices have produced different outcomes for different people of all races, genders, creeds, and lifestyle preferences. In 2017 few if any can legitimately point to any given ism and say their life sucks because of it.
Radicalized Islam is a very tangible thing. It isn’t like the force in Star Wars movies. It is preached by Imams in radicalized mosques. It is disseminated using social media. You can see radicalized Islam too – ISIS makes their doctrine readily available via the internet. The things radicalized Islam does are also readily available on the news. Most recently it was London. Before that, Manchester. And so on.
Except somehow, we’re supposed to believe that it wasn’t radicalized Islam that did any of these things. We are told that “lone wolves” carried out the attacks. Or that the attackers were born and raised in Europe. And that there is nothing to indicate that ISIS headquarters in Raqqa personally sent instructions to the attackers telling them when, where, and how to carry out their assault against the west.
We are all but told that there is no such thing as radicalized Islam because media figures are unable to identify clear cause and effect relationships between radical ideology and things like the Manchester bombing or the London attacks. For the left to get it, an attacker would have to been seen on video meeting personally with al-Baghdadi before embarking upon an attack. (The Manchester bomber traveled to Libya and Syria which evidently wasn’t clear cut enough for the left to understand the connection.)
Why is the standard with which so many of us accept the premise of isms and victimhood so low, while the bar is so high when it comes to radicalized Islam?
In 2017 we will pretend that our isms are responsible for everything from the price of turnips on Tuesdays to the violent crime rate in Chicago. And in 2017, we’ll pretend that for reasons we can’t explain young men of a particular ethnic background and creed independently decide to try and kill as many unsuspecting victims as they can before dying themselves in the process.
If we viewed radicalized Islam half as seriously as we do all our other isms, we might stand a fighting chance.
photo credit: Steve Snodgrass The Face of Terror… via photopin (license)
