It’s popular among a certain sort to point out that Islam has always been a fact of American life — Thomas Jefferson owned a Koran, don’t you know — but that’s not really true. Before 9/11, Islam was only tangentially relevant in American life. As recently as 1993, the journalist Robert Kaplan was still using the term “Moslems,” which feels like “Boer” or “Hottentot” or something else we left in the 19th century.Even years before, both Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan were already enabling footholds, and there were alleged conservatives who were just as hostile as some leftists to the whole notion of daring to speak negatively about the Religion of Peace. Tucker Carlson's quite possibly one of those. Many of these same people are more than utterly willing to call even 911 Families "bigots and xenophobes", and in the past quarter century, I remember a man from Titusville, PA, claiming to be a teacher, who said that while he may not call a kid whose firefighting father died in the WTC tragedy a bigot, he would be perfectly willing to say he was wrong to come within even miles of saying anything negative about the Religion of Peace. Its makes no difference whether somebody's willing to employ crude language or not, what's offensive there is that somebody in a position of "education" is basically saying survivors of 911 and their families have no moral authority and are systematically forbidden to address serious issues like these in any way, shape or form. And it should be noted the man I speak of later embraced a book laced with anti-American metaphors that minimized sexual violence. That man, to my knowledge, died 4 years ago at just 57 years old, of an illness, but the damage people like him did to morale and unity is stunning. And that people like him were willing to support books with repulsive viewpoints speaks volumes.
But on September 11, 2001, Islam and America collided, and the former has been on a speedrun in our country ever since.
It’s fascinating but not entirely surprising that an Islamic terror attack on the United States somehow led to the rapid mainstreaming of radical Islam in this country. Countries tend to import bits of former enemies’ cultures, like how we all drive Hondas and the Japanese love baseball. But the acceptance of even the most vile and un-American forms of Islam was hastened by the liberal obsession with fighting “Islamophobia” during the War on Terror, an arguably good intention that paved the road down which folks like Abdul El-Sayed now trod.
Our problem is not a lack of awareness necessarily — consumers of conservative media at least are familiar with things like the footwashing station in the Dallas-Fort Worth airport and the semi-autonomous Muslim town in Texas. The problem is that even those of us paying attention don’t appreciate how quickly we got here.
As we approach the 25th anniversary of 9/11, consider the scandal that rocked the 10th: the planned construction of an Islamic community center blocks away from the site of the terrorist attack. Dubbed the “Ground Zero Mosque,” the project was almost universally derided. Howard Dean said the project was “a real affront to people who lost their lives” on 9/11, while then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid called for the builders to pick a different site.
It’s hard to imagine Democrats reacting that way now, and that’s a problem. But even in 2011, things had gotten away from us. Reid and Dean broke with President Barack Obama, who defended the project. Obama may not be a secret Kenyan Muslim, but he sure did his best to make criticizing Islam socially unacceptable.
I've thought at times about what Rice says on the high liklihood the Democrats today wouldn't say a word against building a mosque near Ground Zero. And the election of Zohran Mamdani to mayoral office in NYC is additionally chilling, because it speaks volumes about what kind of electorate now resides in the Big Apple, and not just Muslims themselves. It also makes clear how many non-Muslim leftists now reside in a burg I myself never felt much attachment to, and that spells serious trouble going forward. Especially if they reelect Mamdani in the next few years.
