“Trump’s invention of a Swedish terrorist attack was funny. But it likely comes from a dark place.”

Last updated on: March 25, 2017 at 3:33 pm by Dan Peterson

“Trump’s invention of a Swedish terrorist attack was funny. But it likely comes from a dark place.” 2017-03-25T15:33:30-06:00 Dan Peterson

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This article was published well over a month ago, but I see from comments on my blog, on my Facebook page, and in my email inbox that some of what it has to say is still relevant, so I link to it:

http://www.vox.com/world/2017/2/19/14662244/trump-sweden-terrorist-attack-fake

But here’s another word on the topic:

Some have been claiming, over the past few days, that I deny that there are any problems in the Islamic world, that I claim that there is no violence or crime among refugees in Europe, that I believe that there should be no vetting of potential immigrants, and/or that I believe that Islamist terrorism poses no threat.

These assertions are all categorically false. They are not true.

I freely acknowledge that there are major problems in the Islamic world, that there is appalling violence and crime among some refugees in Europe, that all who enter the United States as immigrants should be vetted, and that Islamist terrorism poses a grave threat.

I have posted many times on this blog, and spoken and written and taught and lectured, about problems in the Islamic world, about violence and crimes among refugees in Europe, and about the threat posed by Islamist terrorism. I will continue to do so.

But here’s the thing:

There are those — invariably, in my experience, people who know relatively little, if not essentially nothing, about Islam, Islamic law, and the Islamic world — who exaggerate the problems in the Islamic world, who seek to portray Islam as inherently evil, who spend more time arguing against the admission of refugees and stoking the fires of fear than they do in thinking about what they might do to help, who wildly sensationalize and overstate the problems posed by the refugee influx into Europe, who make irresponsible, uninformed, and inflammatory statements about shari‘a law, and who grossly inflate the risk posed by Islamist terrorism.

Some are coming very close to the kind of nativist bigotry that has been aimed, in our nation’s history, against blacks, Jews, Italians, the Irish, Catholics, and, yes, Mormons. (See, for example, at least the first 2:30 minutes 0f this video.)

I feel a moral obligation to stand up against ignorant distortions, bigotry, religious prejudice, ethnic division, and anything remotely like thereunto.

And I’m going to continue to do it.

What some don’t understand about me is my devotion to the concept of balance. I’ll illustrate it as follows: If I’m in a group of people whom I judge to be overly critical of Israel in their support for the Palestinians, I will speak up for Israel. If, by contrast, I’m among a group whom I judge to be too starry-eyed about Israel and without any sympathy for the Palestinians, I will speak up for the Palestinians and criticize Israel. The truth lies between the two extremes, and I have friends on — and sympathy for — both sides.

In the current climate, especially among people on the political right (where I very much situate myself), there seems to me to be little need to point out the threat of Muslim terrorism or the dysfunctionality of much of the Islamic world. There is likely nobody reading this blog who is unaware of the recent terrorist attack in London, let alone of the earlier attacks in Nice, Paris, London, Madrid, New York, Washington DC, and so forth. I doubt that any reader here has failed to hear of al-Qa‘ida, ISIS, Black Hawk Down, and other such topics. In other words, there’s no real call for me to pile on in this regard. I see my role, instead, as arguing for proper perspective, pointing out that ‘Usama b. Ladin and Ayman al-Zawahiri don’t exhaust the roll of notable Muslims, that the history and culture of Islam are richly varied and defy simplistic generalizations, that Islam isn’t the murderous monster that some propagandists depict, that the Islamic world is neither perfect nor perfectly evil.

It’s not that I minimize the bad. It’s that I won’t stand idly by while, in my judgment, some voices grossly exaggerate it.

If that makes certain folks angry, or wearies them, or causes them to lie about me and to call me (as one poster recently did) “a leftist liberal who hates the Constitution of the United States,” I guess I’ll just have to live with that. My conscience won’t permit me to do otherwise.

(I hope that certain folks in my audience will read this post more than once, if they need to do so, until they fully grasp what I’ve said.)

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