The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
The Phantom Menace
From Covallis, Ore., the Associated Press delivers the latest variation on a familiar story:
Patrols around mosques and other Islamic sites in Portland have been stepped up as Muslim leaders expressed fears of retribution, days after a Somali-American man was accused of trying to blow up a van full of explosives during the city’s Christmas tree lighting ceremony.
Portland Mayor Sam Adams said Sunday that he beefed up protection around mosques “and other facilities that might be vulnerable to knuckle-headed retribution” after hearing of the bomb plot.
The move followed a fire Sunday at the Islamic center in Corvallis, a college town about 75 miles southwest of Portland, where suspect Mohamed Osman Mohamud occasionally worshipped, prompting an FBI arson investigation and concern about the potential for more retaliation.
The AP quotes Yosof Wanly, imam of the Corvallis Islamic center: “We know how it is, we know some people due to ignorance are going to perceive of these things and hold most Muslims accountable.”
We see the same two themes in the news coverage of every terror attack: the playing down of the terrorists’ religious motives and the playing up of the threat of retaliation against innocent Muslims. The motive of the terror defendant is treated as a great mystery, whereas the motive of an action like the fire at the Corvallis center–about which, in fact, we have nothing to go on beyond speculation–is assumed to be anti-Muslim enmity. Can’t Americans expect the same presumption of good will and innocence that journalists and public officials go out of their way to extend to the Muslims among us?
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