Everyone knows by now that American universities are no longer institutions of higher learning, but indoctrination centers for the hard-Left. University of Michigan professor Juan Cole, a prominent writer on Islam-related issues and author of a whitewashed and hagiographical biography of Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, proved that again Thursday with an article in Foreign Policy In Focus entitled “Islam Wasn’t the Threat — Islamophobia Was.” His aim, obviously, was to demonstrate that after the jihad attacks in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, the U.S. greatly exaggerated a jihad terror threat, and is still doing so, while ignoring real terror threats and victimizing innocent Muslims. It’s pure nonsense, and straight-up anti-American Leftist agitprop, but that’s par for the course in American academia these days.
Cole begins by whining that “Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson excused one of the leaders of the extremist Oath Keepers organization implicated in the January 6th insurrection by describing him as ‘a devout Christian.’ It’s safe to surmise that he wouldn’t have offered a similar defense for a Muslim American.” Aside from whatever Tucker Carlson might do or not do, Cole’s point here is that the January 6 “insurrection” was a manifestation of “Christian terrorism,” equivalent to the Islamic terrorism we saw on 9/11.
In order to make this point, Cole has to ignore that no one has been charged with insurrection in connection with January 6, the protestors were unarmed, the police opened the doors of the Capitol and invited them in, and no one was killed except one of the protestors, by a rogue cop who has faced no punishment, since he is safely anti-Trump. Cole also has to ignore the fact that nearly 3,000 people were murdered by Islamic jihad terrorists on 9/11, and that those attacks were just one day’s worth, with 40,000 more jihad attacks coming worldwide since then.
Cole only sees 9/11 as the impetus for the victimization of Muslims in the United States: “Since September 11th, and even before that ominous date, Muslim Americans have suffered bitterly from discrimination and hate crimes in this country, while their religion has been demonized. During the first year of the Trump administration, about half of Muslim Americans polled said that they had personally experienced some type of discrimination.”
The “academic” claims a double standard: “No matter that this group resides comfortably in the American mainstream, it remains under intensive, often unconstitutional, surveillance. In contrast, during the past two decades, the Department of Justice for the most part gave a pass to violent white supremacists. No matter that they generated more terrorist attacks on U.S. soil than any other group. The benign insouciance of the white American elite toward such dangerous fanatics also allowed them to organize freely for the January 6th assault on the Capitol and the potential violent overthrow of the government.”
All right. Let’s look at the larger picture.
On June 1, 2009, a Muslim named Abdulhakim Muhammad shot a soldier to death at a Little Rock military recruiting office, explicitly in the name of Allah. On November 5, 2009 in Fort Hood, Major Nidal Malik Hasan murdered thirteen unarmed soldiers while screaming “Allahu akbar.” On April 15, 2013, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev exploded two bombs at the Boston Marathon, killing three people and injuring many more in the name of Islam. On September 25, 2014, Alton Nolen, a convert to Islam, beheaded a coworker at Vaughan Foods in Moore, Oklahoma, and had publicly supported jihad violence.
On July 16, 2015 in Chattanooga, a Muslim named Mohammad Abdulazeez went on a shooting spree at a naval base, murdering five soldiers. On November 4, 2015 at the University of California, Merced, Faisal Mohammad stabbed four people “in the name of Allah.” On December 2, 2015 in San Bernardino, a Muslim couple, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, opened fire at a Christmas party, murdering fourteen people. On January 7, 2016, a convert to Islam named Edward Archer shot Philadelphia police officer Jesse Hartnett because “police bend laws that are contrary to the teachings of the Qur’an.” On February 11, 2016, a Muslim named Mohammad Barry entered the Nazareth Restaurant & Deli in Columbus, Ohio and began stabbing patrons because the owner of the restaurant was an Israeli.
On June 12, 2016 in Orlando, Florida, a Muslim named Omar Mateen murdered 49 people and injures 58 at a gay bar. He insisted that he was doing this out of loyalty to the Islamic State. On November 28, 2016 at Ohio State University, a Muslim student, Abdul Artan, intentionally rammed a car into pedestrians and then began stabbing people with a butcher knife, injuring 11 people. On October 31, 2017, a Muslim named Sayfullo Habibullaevich Saipov rented a Home Depot pickup truck and intentionally drove it down a bicycle path, killing eight people and injuring twelve.
On December 6, 2019 at the Naval Air Station Pensacola, a second lieutenant of the Saudi Royal Air Force, Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, murdered three U.S. sailors. On May 21, 2020 at the Naval Air Station Corpus Christi, a Muslim named Adam Alsahi crashed through a gate, got out and opened fire, shooting a Navy police officer. On August 29, 2021 in Plano, Texas, a Muslim named Imran Ali Rasheed murdered a Lyft driver, stole her car, and drove to Plano police headquarters, where he shot two people. He left a note explaining his Islamic motivations.
Longtime Jihad Watch readers know that this is only a partial list of jihad terror acts in the U.S. since 9/11. Then there are all the foiled plots.
Meanwhile, how many people were killed or injured in the U.S. in “Islamophobic” attacks? None. None at all.
“Islam wasn’t the threat — Islamophobia was,” says the bought-and-paid-for pseudo-academic Juan Cole. This is the state of American academia today.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 23 books including many bestsellers, such as The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The Truth About Muhammad and The History of Jihad. His latest book is The Critical Qur’an. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.
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