NY Times: 'Angry...Seething...Almost Apocalyptic' Republican Candidates Promote 'Islamophobia'

By Clay Waters | December 6, 2015 | 11:18 AM EST

The front page of Saturday's New York Times, next to the paper's already infamous front-page gun-control editorial, claimed that "Shootings in California Reshape the Campaigns." The language used by reporters Michael Barbaro and Trip Gabriel was quite revealing. See how the Republican presidential candidates "angrily demanded...[rode a] rising tide of bellicosity... seethed with disgust for Democrats...Their language was almost apocalyptic..." Meanwhile they missed the "nuance" of Democratic gun-control proposals. And the paper's religion reporter Laurie Goodstein seemed to fear "Islamophobia" more than Islamic terrorism, though FBI stats show that anti-Semitic attacks are far more common.

From Saturday's front-page report by Barbaro and Gabriel:

The Republican candidates for president angrily demanded on Friday that the United States face up to a new world war, one that has breached its borders, threatened the safety of Americans and brought the menace of Islamic terrorism deep into the homeland.With striking unanimity, they accused President Obama and his fellow Democrats of shrinking from a long-overdue assault on the Islamic State and its frighteningly effective tools of global recruitment.

....

The rising tide of bellicosity gripped the Republican presidential field, as the initial restraint and calls for prayers that followed the shootings gave way to revelations that the massacre may have been inspired by the Islamic State.

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas seethed with disgust for Democrats, declaring, “This nation needs a wartime president.”

“Whether or not the current administration realizes it, or is willing to acknowledge it,” he added, “our enemies are at war with us.”

Their language was almost apocalyptic. Jeb Bush described the looming threat of “Islamic terrorism that wants to destroy our way of life, wants to attack our freedom.”

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That, too, was the focus of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who on Friday clamored for expanded background checks and the closure of gun-purchasing loopholes.

Republicans showed little patience for such nuance. In Greenland, N.H., Senator Marco Rubio of Florida mocked the president and the Democratic candidates.

“Forty-eight hours after this is over they’re still out there talking about gun control measures,” Mr. Rubio said, evoking the terror attacks in Paris three weeks ago. “As if somehow terrorists care about what our gun laws are. France has some of the strictest gun laws in the world and they have no problem acquiring an arsenal to kill people.”

For all the heated expressions from Republicans, there emerged no real detailed consensus among them about how to destroy the Islamic State or stop it from inspiring future adherents in the United States.

They favored symbolism over specific policy prescriptions. Mr. Cruz on Friday appeared at a shooting range in Johnston, Iowa, emphasizing Americans’ right to bear arms in these newly dangerous times.

Also on Saturday, religion reporter Laurie Goodstein took the left-wing cue of fearing "Islamophobia" on the part of Americans more than terror attacks by radical Islamists in a public-relations style story, "Muslims in America Condemn Extremists and Fear Anew for Their Lives."

Only hours after news broke that a suspect in a mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., had a Muslim name, the well-practiced organizations that represent American Muslims to the broader public kicked into action, as they routinely do after each terrorist attack attributed to Muslim extremists.

They issued news releases condemning the attacks as inhuman and un-Islamic, posted expressions of grief on Facebook and held news conferences in which Muslim leaders stood flanked by American flags alongside clergy of other faiths and law enforcement officials.

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But the message is apparently not getting through. Muslims and leaders of mosques across the United States say they are experiencing a wave of death threats, assaults and vandalism unlike anything they have experienced since the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001.

They say that they observed an escalation in hateful episodes this fall after anti-Muslim remarks by the Republican presidential candidates Donald J. Trump and Ben Carson. The threats, vandalism and violence grew more frequent and frightening after the attacks by Islamic State militants last month in Paris.

Now, with the F.B.I. saying that one of those responsible for the San Bernardino massacre had expressed Islamic State sympathies on Facebook, American Muslims are bracing for more hate directed their way. Overnight on Friday, vandals broke all the windows at the Islamic Center of Palm Beach in Florida, turned over furniture in the prayer room and left bloody stains throughout the facility. The F.B.I. is investigating death threats left by voice mail at a mosque in Manassas, Va.

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However, Muslim Americans are now confronting the fact that to many Americans, Mr. Farook and other terrorists do represent Islam -- especially since polls show that most Americans know no Muslims and little about Islam.

Goodstein eventually hinted that there are actually no hard statistics to confirm the pro-Muslim anecdotes about an increase in crimes against Muslims or mosques.

The F.B.I. said it did not yet have data for hate crimes in 2015, and would not comment on whether there had recently been a rise in attacks on Muslims and their houses of worship. A chart provided by Stephen G. Fischer Jr., chief of multimedia productions for the F.B.I.’s criminal justice information service, showed that bias-related hate crimes against Muslims were at a peak in 2001, with 481 reported. In 2014, 154 such crimes were reported.

According to the FBI's 2013 Hate Crimes Statistics, by far most incidents of "anti-religious hate crimes" involved attacks on Jews:"60.3 percent were victims of crimes motivated by their offenders’ anti-Jewish bias....13.7 percent were victims of anti-Islamic (Muslim) bias...6.1 percent were victims of anti-Catholic bias."

A Saturday editorial also played the Islamophobia card: "Fear Ignorance, Not Muslims."

As the country continues a long and dangerous campaign to root out and prevent terrorist threats, it is concerned but not helpless. Federal investigators are starting a terrorism investigation in the California mass shooting, and more facts will emerge about the background of the killers and their links to the Islamic State.

Wherever the investigation leads, Americans must guard against overreaction, and subdue the panicked reflex of distrust and hatred toward the Americans among us who are Muslims. This has been a problem at least since 9/11 and will remain one as long as ignorance about Islam remains deep and widespread. Today the ignorance is being inflamed by know-nothings in the political sphere -- by Republican presidential candidates calling for American Muslims to be registered and monitored, and for mosques to be spied on or shut down. Governors of more than two dozen states have declared their borders shut to Syrian refugees, in open defiance of common sense, the Constitution and human decency.

Timothy Egan continued the media trend of offensively attacking politicians who offered prayers after the attack in "No More Thoughts And Prayers." Egan then did suggest that some on the left were also too "cowardly" in refusing to confront radical Islam. But first he revealed his Obama-style liberal assumptions about the identity of the killers, from "anti-government wacko" to "workplace violence."

I thought, initially, this had to be an anti-government wacko. You know, getting revenge against the system, as represented by all those county workers at a facility for people with disabilities. A Timothy McVeigh type. Except, the co-workers were known to one of the shooters. The victims were friends with lives and families of their own, not just targets. That makes no sense either.

So, workplace violence? A personal slight that became a seething that metastasized into a commando-style raid at the Inland Regional Center. It happens all the time.

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When we heard the identity of the homicidal couple, Syed Rizwan Farook, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, another explanation immediately came to mind. They’re Muslim. Too much of the most deadly, inexplicable violence in the world today is committed in the name of this religion, and its strain of radical Islam. The shooters are people like Farook, kneeling at prayer in the back of the mosque, kindly and devout. Oh, we never suspected a thing, the imam says. The explanation is tiresome, and increasingly implausible.

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The village of victims, their best friends, the children who lost parents, the parents who lost adult children, they can clench their fists and cry. We all know the ritual by now. Politicians of one cowardly type will say their “thoughts and prayers” are with you. What garbage. Better to say nothing at all.

And politicians of another cowardly type will refuse to see that hundreds, maybe thousands of the world’s 1.6 billion Muslims find justification for mass murder of innocent people in their holy book.

“Your ‘thoughts’ should be about steps to take to stop this carnage,” tweeted Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut. “Your ‘prayers’ should be for forgiveness if you do nothing -- again.”