I am not sure how much attention you pay to the news, but it appears to have been a relatively quiet week this week regarding Islamic violent extremism….. or has it? I am amazed as I scour the press and intelligence reports each week concerning violent extremism. Two things are happening specifically that I think we should all be aware of. 1. Terrorism is becoming the new normal. I touched on that a few weeks ago in my article “Disruption…the new normal?” What is happening is that our threshold of what is important to report is morphing. It used to be that even the unnecessary and violent death of one child would be a reportable event. It would stir our hearts and move some to action. It feels like it is no longer the case. Yesterday I was with a young Afghan refugee boy. As we talked he began to cry. I asked him why he was crying and he relayed to me that there had been a bomb in Kabul two days before, and his brother had been killed in that bombing. He told me how they only found half of his body. He was distraught in sorrow. I looked for even one article on this bombing and I found nothing.
2. Liberal media have decided for some reason to decrease the tempo of reporting on Islamic jihadist terror attacks. There is an increasing fear of the “Islamaphobic label” in the press and anybody who consistently reports of these things runs the risk of that label. If you look at the reporting closely, you will notice that it is filled with innuendo that seeks to always down play the possibility that it has anything to do with Islam. I have said before, and I will continue to repeat… not all Muslims are violent extremists. I also know that there are those who commit crimes n the name of Christ as well, thinking they are doing God’s will. But the pace of attacks over the past decade that look strangely alike might cause even a casual observer to conclude there is some kind of connection. When a man walks into a room, shouts Allahu Akbar! and then stabs several people to death that feels like something that has to do with Islamic violent extremism to me. I am trying my best to not become acerbic in my heart towards anybody, but there certainly is a temptation to think that maybe the Islamic leadership ought to take some form of action to curtail these kinds of killings. There are mechanisms within Islam to address these kinds of matters. It could be something as simple as a fetwa issued against these kinds of killings.
I think as long as the liberal media and our political intelligentsia refuses to believe that there is any connection between extremist violence and Islam the issues will not go away and people will continue to be non-sensibly killed.
Then came the Las Vegas mass killings!…. it is amazing how quickly things change! It will be interesting to see if there is any connection between Stephen Paddock and ISIS. Right now most agencies and Intelligence services are saying no connection, but ISIS does not have ea history of just making up these connections. They may not always be as strongly connected as they say, but there are only a few that are totally fabricated. We will continue to watch. One service called Understanding the Threat (UTT) is convinced that they are connected and are saying we will all be surprised. https://www.understandingthethreat.com/utt-assesse…