Yet another blow to the establishment media narrative came Wednesday. The Associated Press reported that Faisal Mohammad, who in 2015 stabbed four people in a classroom at the University of California, Merced, where he was a freshman, “planned to praise Allah while slitting the throats of classmates and use a gun taken from an ambushed officer to kill more.” Then he planned to call 911 to report the killings, “read the Quran until he heard sirens, and then ‘take calm shot after shot’ with the gun” when the police arrived. All this happened while the U.S. government was institutionally and thoroughgoingly committed to the proposition that Islam is a peaceful and tolerant religion that has nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism. And even after four years of President Trump, that institutional culture hasn’t changed.

The detailed plan that Mohammad sketched out for his attack has just been released; it “included putting on a balaclava at 7:45 a.m. and saying ‘in the name of Allah’ before stepping into his classroom and ordering students to use zip-ties he provided to bind their hands. Mohammad also planned to make a fake 911 distress call to report a suicidal guy [sic; this is how they write at AP these days] and wait for police outside the classroom before ambushing from behind ‘and slit calmly yet forcefully one of the officers with guns.’”

It was during that wait that he planned to sit down and spend some time in spiritual reading. Yet Mohammad’s attack, as The College Fix reported back in November 2015, was characterized as “revenge for being kicked out of a study group.” The establishment media gave scant attention to the fact that “Mohammad was found to have an image of the ISIS flag, a handwritten manifesto with instructions on how to behead someone, and reminders to pray to Allah.”

The university where this jihad attack took place was even worse. The College Fix reported that instead of waking up to the reality of Islamic jihad, many at the University of California-Merced mourned for the attacker, with a Facebook “R.I.P” tribute to Faisal Mohammad “gaining massive support among the campus community.”

Even worse, UC Merced faculty hosted a “teach in” that about 200 students attented, entitled “Don’t Turn Our Tragedy Into Hate” that was “conspicuously devoid of discussions of radical Islam, and instead delved into topics such as how society’s notions of masculinity pressure men.” Among the topics discussed at this “teach in” were “What does mental health have to do with this?”; “Why are men more likely to be perpetrators of violence?”; “How do we define our community – what lives are grievable?”; and “What do race and religion have to do with this?”

One speaker suggested that the attack was all about men not being allowed to be weak, self-centered, weepy narcissists: “Anger, that is really what we think about when we think about emotional men. They are subject to social sanctions if they deviate from masculinity. If you are perceived as failing at it, you are subject to being called a fag, a pussy, a wimp, pretty much what women are, right? So when you have this limited ability to sort of express your emotions and possible feelings of emasculation, of low self esteem, how do you really [deal with] that? A lot of times they … engage in violence. They need to compensate for their loss of masculinity in the most manly way they have access to, and unfortunately, a lot of times that’s violence.”

Yes, you see? Faisal Mohammad stabbed four people just because he was a sensitive soul in a world that was too harsh for him. Why, what other explanation could there possibly be? According to one student who attended the teach in, “‘Islamophobia’ was cited as the reason people want to call it a terrorist attack….‘People were quick to sympathize with the attacker and assume anyone who thought this was related to radical Islam was a xenophobic racist.’”

The University of California Merced is no different from any other campus all over the country today: full of indoctrinated bots who have been thoroughly imbued with the notion that when Islamic jihadists attack us, it is our fault. All too many even among law enforcement and counterterrorism officials assume the same thing. No number of Faisal Mohammads, and there will be many more, will convince them otherwise. Nonetheless, it is unfortunate but true that eventually all this denial and willful ignorance is going to blow up in everyone’s face. We can only hope that this doesn’t happen literally.

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 21 books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.