Hillary’s blindness to Muslim extremists is dangerous
Hillary Clinton at a town hall event in Iowa City, Iowa on Dec. 16.Photo: Reuters
Hillary Clinton chose Minneapolis — with its growing enclave of fundamentalist Muslim refugees — to announce her plan to combat terrorism on Tuesday. That’s like choosing Baskin-Robbins to announce your weight-loss plans.
Clinton offered little more than platitudes like: “We have to do more to address the challenge of radicalization.” Meanwhile, that challenge was right under her nose.
The city’s huge Somali refugee population makes it a symbol of the problem, not the solution. Some 30,000 have been placed there by the federal government. Many of them say they would rather live under Islamic religious law — Sharia — than American law, and resist adapting to American ways. Their ideology makes them ripe for jihadization.
Indeed, dozens of young men from this Muslim enclave have left to fight with radical Islamists in Somalia and Syria. “We have a terror recruiting problem in Minnesota,” reports Andy Luger, a federal prosecutor there.
The key to Hillary’s anti-terrorism plan is the empty hope that Muslims in America will self-police. “They are the best positioned to block anything going forward.” Don’t count on it. As the ongoing San Bernardino shooting investigation shows, even Muslims who aren’t stockpiling AK-47s can’t be counted on to report what their family members or acquaintances are doing.
Clinton saved her scorn for Americans, saying they should be ashamed for demonizing Muslims here. She called for “empowering Muslim-American communities.” But which Muslim-Americans is she talking about? Some Muslims are our friends, but others want to kill us. That’s true here — and worldwide.
Clinton took aim at Donald Trump’s proposal to suspend all Muslims from coming to the United States. But Trump’s idea is not as dangerous as Hillary’s insistence that anti-Muslim rhetoric is what incites Muslims to terrorism. That’s delusional.
Moderate Muslims here are not a problem. But fundamentalist Muslims pose a high risk. Hillary cheerfully overlooked this distinction.
Minneapolis’ Somali community is a potential time-bomb. It’s the product of a naïve federal policy to place concentrations of refugees in American towns and cities, without taking into account the Islamic zealotry in the high-risk countries they left, such as Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.
A Pew Research report tells us where the danger spots are. A shocking 99 percent of Afghanistan’s Muslims, 91 percent of Iraqi Muslims and 84 percent of Pakistani Muslims identify themselves as fundamentalists who favor Sharia law. Equally jaw-dropping, 39 percent of Afghanistan’s Muslims say they consider violent acts such as suicide bombings always or sometimes justified “in defense of Islam.”
The New York Police Department has explained what turns “unremarkable” Muslims with ordinary lives into terrorists. It’s not unkind words from presidential candidates.
The essential step is buying into a fundamentalist version of Islam that depicts the West as evil. Muslims thinking this way are ripe for jihadization.
Admitting newcomers from Indonesia, India and other moderate Islamic nations poses little danger. Not true of high-risk countries. In Pakistan, students in some schools routinely pray, “May God annihilate America.”
The nation’s top national-security experts, including FBI head James Comey, warn the United States can’t screen individuals from nations in turmoil, like Syria, for terrorist connections. If we can’t vet individuals, we must bar newcomers from high-risk nations.
Clinton does call for a “full visa investigation” for anyone coming in from a high-risk country, but the former secretary of state knows that’s an empty reassurance. Travel from those countries needs to be suspended, period.
Hillary had only praise for Little Mogadishu — the Muslim-Somali enclave in Minneapolis: “This is such a open-hearted and generous community.” If only.
In fact, Little Mogadishu is a far cry from Little Italy or Chinatown, where successive generations of immigrants have embraced American values.
Hillary spurns the idea that any group of newcomers could pose a danger. “That is not who we are,” she announced, trying to shame us out of any caution about who we let in.
The problem is not who we are. It’s who they are.
Betsy McCaughey is a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research.
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