This is always the mainstream media preoccupation after a jihad attack: portraying Muslims as victims of a generally nonexistent “backlash.” There is always a steady stream of articles like this one after every fresh jihad murder, and never, ever any articles about Muslim communities redoubling their efforts to show themselves to be loyal citizens and rooting out the jihadis.
“French Muslims fear reprisals in wake of Paris terrorist attacks,” by Christina Boyle, Los Angeles Times, November 15, 2015 (thanks to Darcy):
In this heavily Muslim suburb of Paris, there was a nagging fear in the back of many minds on Sunday: Would the latest spasm of violence in the name of Islam bring retaliation against their community?
“Of course we are scared,” said one worshiper at the Evry-Courcouronnes mosque, an ethnically diverse community full of low-rise public housing about 20 miles south of the center of Paris.
“We didn’t choose for this to happen. The people who carried out the murders were not Muslim, they were not fanatics, they were assassins. But not everyone sees that.”
Maybe that’s because it’s so hard to see when the assassins explain themselves in terms that are so very Muslim.
In the wake of Friday’s terrorism strikes in Paris, some residents of this suburb – built in the 1970s to offer a cheaper, more spacious alternative to city living, but now mostly home to poorer immigrants – faced the possibility that some might view them as the enemy.
Already, French officials have warned of the possibility of cracking down on mosques deemed as harboring Muslim radicals.
The French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said Sunday that the state of emergency declared Friday gives the government the means to act more quickly against those “who preach hatred in France,” including through expulsions and the “dissolution” of radical mosques.
“I didn’t wait for the state of emergency to track down radical imams who preach hatred and to address places of worship where they preach that hatred,” Cazeneuve said in an interview with France 2 TV. He said the expansion of government powers will allow the authorities to be “much quicker in the expression of the republic’s resolve … in the face of terrorism.”
No public mention has been made of targeting mosques in Courcouronnes, but that hasn’t stopped residents here from worrying about the general atmosphere across Europe.
It didn’t help that far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen quickly called on fellow citizens to “annihilate Islamist fundamentalism” and to “take back control” of their borders….
Muslims in France are upset about this? Yet we’re constantly told that the Muslims in the West are moderates who abhor “Islamist fundamentalism.” So why would they not want it annihilated?