Muslim Radicalism, Media Fears & White House Resonses

by Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: Paris Siege Ends Two hostage crises in Paris were resolved today. Cherif and Said Kouachi, the two jihadists responsible for Wednesday's slaughter at Charlie Hebdo, seized a hostage and entered a printing plant outside of Paris. They told police that they wanted to die as martyrs. They got their wish.

Not long after the police cornered the Kouachi brothers, a second jihadist attack erupted at a kosher market in Paris. Four hostages were reportedly killed. Amedy Coulibaly, the radical Islamist responsible for that incident, murdered a French policewoman yesterday. He is also dead.

Out of an abundance of caution, French authorities immediately ordered all shops in Paris' Jewish district to be closed. While I understand the concern, it is a sad echo of events in the 1930s when Jewish stores were closed for their own safety and that decade ended with Jews in cattle cars.

French Jews have been the targets of increasing jihadist violence for years now. In 2012, a rabbi and three children were shot at a Jewish school in Toulouse, France. Last summer French synagogues were attacked by Muslim mobs. The list goes on.

Anti-Semitism in France has gotten so bad that Natan Sharansky of the Jewish Agency said recently that 50,000 French Jews requested information about emigrating to Israel last year.

Somewhere in hell, Hitler is smiling.

A Fifth Column? These were not isolated events. Coulibaly and the Kouachi brothers were part of a radical Islamist group in France called the "Buttes Chaumont" cell, named after a Paris park. The men had extensive criminal histories, and their desire to wage jihad was known to intelligence officials.

The larger reality is that there are an unknown number of such cells throughout Western Europe and here in the United States. Some may be affiliated with Al Qaeda, some with ISIS, some with Hezbollah or Hamas. (By the way Hezbollah is very active throughout South America, something that we have often noted during debates involving our porous borders.)

Nigel Farage, leader of a populist party in Great Britain called the UK Independence Party (UKIP), warned that the Paris attacks are the bitter fruit of the left's devotion to political correctness and multiculturalism. Farage said:

"We now have within many European countries, and dare I say it, within the U.S.A. too, a fifth column living within our own countries. . . people who are out to destroy a whole civilization and our way of life. . . So let's recognize the mistakes we've made. . . .

"We have promoted multiculturalism. We have promoted division within our societies. We have said to large numbers of people, 'You can come here from any part of the world. Oh, by the way, please don't bother to learn our language, don't integrate in any way at all. You can take over whole parts of our towns and cities and we'll say it's made us a wonderful diverse nation.' That hasn't worked."

The West's Response Meanwhile, the Obama Administration continues its asinine policy of releasing radical Islamists from Guantanamo Bay. We know that a significant percentage of them will rejoin the jihadi war against the West.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, whose anti-police rhetoric has come back to haunt him as cops are being buried, shutdown surveillance of mosques last year, citing all the left-wing canards about racial profiling.

As the war quickens, the last thing we should be doing is freeing captured jihadists and stopping surveillance in communities where cells, like the one in Paris, hide and launch their attacks.

By the way, the head of Britain's intelligence agency, MI5, warned yesterday that Al Qaeda is planning mass casualty attacks in the West. He had planned to deliver these remarks prior to Wednesday's slaughter at Charlie Hebdo. While this battle in Paris may be over, more jihadi assaults are coming.

And as more men, women and children are slaughtered, people from Paris to London, Berlin to Washington and Sydney to Toronto will be forced to decide how they will respond. Will the West follow the current philosophy of barely disguised appeasement, denial of who the enemy is and what motivates it, while surrendering more of our liberty?

Or will we do what we eventually did with German Nazism and Soviet communism -- rally the forces of freedom and, with every ounce of courage we can muster, defeat this threat to our civilization?

The Left's Surrender - Listening to many talking heads over the past few days, it seems that some on the left have already surrendered. For example, former Carter advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski referred to "The Prophet" this morning, while noting how terribly offensive those cartoons were. It reminded me of Obama's remark before the United Nations in 2012 when he said, "The future must not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam."

It struck me that Brzezinki wasn't the only person I have heard in the last 48 hours who referred to Muhammad as "The Prophet." I don't recall any commentator in recent weeks referring to "Jesus, the son of God" or "Jesus, the Messiah."

Is the fact that some reporters feel compelled to refer to Muhammad as "The Prophet" a sign that Islamism is winning as the corpses pile up?

The media have an obvious double standard. Dean Baquet, executive editor of the New York Times, decided that his paper would not publish the cartoons run by Charlie Hebdo. Baquet did not want to offend the "sensibilities of Times readers, especially its Muslim readers." Yet, it has no qualms about offending Christians and Jews.

Here's another disturbing example of self-censorship. A female journalist at Charlie Hebdo was told by one of the attackers, "I'm not going to kill you because you're a woman, we don't kill women, but you must convert to Islam, read the Quran and cover yourself."

That quote directly tying the attack to Islam was removed from a New York Times column.

Imagine a different scenario. Suppose a gunman burst into an abortion clinic and told a woman there just before shooting the abortionist, "I'm not going to kill you because you're a woman, we don't kill women, but you must convert to Christianity, read the Bible and submit to your husband."

Does anyone think for a second that the New York Times would drop that quote out of concern for the sensibilities of its Christian readers? Of course not!

That exchange would be on the front page, held up as Exhibit A for why every pastor must denounce the "radical pro-life movement."

How Deep Is Muslim Radicalism? Many commentators are assuring us this morning that sympathy in the Muslim world for the kind of terror attack that took place in Paris yesterday is incredibly small. But last year a Pew Research survey in Muslim countries found disturbingly high support justifying violence against civilian targets to defend Islam.

For example, 19% of Nigerian Muslims said violence against civilians to defend Islam is "often or sometimes justified." In Bangladesh the figure was 47%. In Egypt, 24% of Muslims agreed that violence was justified to defend Islam. In Lebanon 29% agreed as did 18% in Turkey.

In real numbers, those percentages conservatively translate into approximately 118 million Muslims in just five countries who are willing to kill civilians in order to defend their faith.

Figures about Muslims living in non-Islamic countries are harder to come by. We do know that in a 2012 study done in the U.S., nearly half of Muslims surveyed said they believed that Americans who are critical of Islam or make fun of it should face criminal charges. And 40% believed that Muslims in the U.S. should be governed by Sharia law, not the Constitution or American law.

The New York Times Is Afraid Twenty-four hours after Islamic jihadists brutally murdered journalists in Paris, The New York Times is deeply worried. . . about European conservatives.

In an analysis this morning, under the headline "Paris Attack Reflects A Dangerous Moment For Europe," Times writers Steven Erlanger and Katrin Bennhold made clear that the "dangerous moment" was not the escalation of Islamist attacks but that the Paris massacre will cause a swing to the right on a "continent already seething with anti-immigrant sentiments. . . feeding far-right nationalist parties."

Meanwhile, a Paris policewoman was gunned down this morning in another likely jihadist attack.

Meanwhile At The White House White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest outlined for reporters what the U.S. must do to confront the growing Islamist threat. Earnest bemoaned that, "There are some individuals who are using a peaceful religion and grossly distorting it."

Then he gave the remedy, which was that the U.S. must "be clear about what the tenets of Islam actually are. And we are going to redouble those efforts. . ."

So as Islamists kill us, the Obama Administration feels it is essential for the United States to tell the world how peaceful Islam is. That should work.

By the way, if you need more evidence of the left's politically correct idiocy, check out this exchange on MSNBC comparing the Paris murders to the "extremism" of Jerry Falwell filing a lawsuit.

A Jewish Realignment? As readers know, I am not a fan of President Obama's foreign policy, especially when it comes to Israel. I have often noted in these reports that just like in Europe there is a growing hostility among America's political left toward Israel.

That hostility burst into public view in dramatic fashion during the 2012 Democratic National Convention. Left-wing delegates voted to remove references to Jerusalem as the capital of Israel from the DNC's platform.

Realizing the potential PR nightmare, party leaders orchestrated a floor vote to reinstate the language. The ensuing debacle of repeated votes and loud boos turned into a PR nightmare.

American Jews have long been loyal to the Democratic Party. In some respects it makes sense: Harry Truman was president when the modern state of Israel was formed and he pledged America's full support for the Jewish state. Old habits, including voting patterns, are hard to break.

But a new Gallup survey suggests that Jewish support for Truman's party may be waning. Since 2008, there has been a 17-point swing in partisan loyalties among Jewish voters -- Democrats have lost ten points, while Republicans gained seven.

The Washington Post notes, "In 2000, George W. Bush got 19 percent of the Jewish vote. In 2012, Mitt Romney got 30 percent."

For issue-oriented voters, partisan loyalties are important, but ultimately they are secondary concerns. For example, if the Republican Party abandoned its positions on life and marriage, millions of values voters would walk away from the GOP.

Likewise, it appears that Obama's irrational pressure on Israel and repeated appeasement of Iran has not been lost on Jewish voters who care about America's and Israel's safety and security.
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Gary Bauer is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families

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