The story of Muslim self-pity and claimed victimization is here.
A Navy spokesperson says Saudi Arabian aviation students at three naval bases, including NAS Pensacola, are not allowed to fly until further notice. The Islamic community both locally and abroad says they feel a sense of unease following the deadly shooting.
The “Islamic community both locally and abroad” – that’s a lot of Muslims, about 1.5 billion – “feel a sense of unease.” Do they really? How does the reporter know this? No one in the “Islamic community” abroad is quoted in the article. Exactly two Muslims in the U.S. – Salma Ashmawi of the Islamic Center of Northwest Florida, and Wilfredo Ruiz of CAIR – are quoted in the piece. Does that claimed “sense of unease” have any basis in fact? Have any Muslims suffered because of the Pensacola killings? Any attacks? Any threats of attacks? No, no, no, and no.
The Saudi students at NAS Pensacola remain restricted from leaving the base by their Saudi commander.
“When you’re not American and just visiting, there’s that extra anxiety that comes with it. They do read and hear things that frighten them, I’m sure. They probably have a higher sense of anxiety and the FBI and base [naval air bases] have their own reasons for restricting them, but I’m sure a lot of it is for their own security,” said Salma Ashmawi, spokesperson for the Islamic Center of Northwest Florida.
When Salma Ashmawi says that restricting Saudi airmen from operational training and confining them to their bases is “for their own security,” she can only mean that they might be physically attacked by American islamophobes with their supposed lynch-mob mentality. But there have been no attacks on any Saudis, airmen or otherwise, in the U.S. either before or since the Pensacola attack, and Ashmawi knows this perfectly well. Even after 9/11, with 15 of the 19 mass murderers having been identified as Saudis, there were no attacks on Saudi nationals anywhere in the U.S.
Is it true that the Saudi airmen “read and hear things that frighten them”? Has there been any real cause for alarm on their part? Ashmawi offers no evidence of this. And when she refers to the FBI and base [officers] who have their “own reasons for restricting them,” why doesn’t she mention those reasons? For it is obvious that a Saudi student pilot in a plane could wreak terrible damage, flying that plane into a building, or simply nosediving it, killing both the Saudi trainee and his American trainer. Certainly the American pilots who would be flying with them would want the 850 Saudi student airmen now in the U.S. to be much more thoroughly vetted after the Pensacola attack. Can Ashmawi blame them?
Ashmawi says that while the local Muslim community “mourns with the rest of Pensacola, there is also fear and anger directed their way. She has seen the impact this is having.”
Ashmawi fairly overflows with a feeling of victimization. She has embraced, as we have seen Muslims do after every terror attack in the U.S., the notion that it is they, the Muslims, who are the real “victims” and who deserve our sympathy and support. She fails to offer in evidence a single concrete example of such “fear and anger” directed at Muslims; had there been even one, she would surely have supplied the details.
“That adds and feeds into the fear of going out, fear of taking kids to our weekend school. Our numbers are really down, on Sunday we usually have 80 students, we had 37,” said Ashmawi.
Again, does Ashmawi have any evidence, anywhere, of threats against, or attacks on, Muslims in Pensacola? No, she does not. The supposed fears of Muslim parents who kept their children from attending an Islamic Sunday school – if indeed they were not merely the result of Ashmawi’s whipping up those fears herself – were groundless.
Wilfredo Ruiz with the Council of American and Islamic Relations, who served as a U.S. Navy Officer, says he does not want the Islamic community to take the blame for the actions of the shooter. He believes the focus should be on the government and what they are doing to keep citizens safe, not on one religion.
The self-pity is palpable: Wilfred Ruiz of CAIR says the Islamic community should not “take the blame for the actions of the shooter.” But it’s a baseless worry; that Islamic community is not being blamed. And it is not just Saudi students who are being investigated; all 5,200 foreign students receiving military training in this country are now being re-examined. The “actions of the shooter,” however, need to be investigated so as to prevent further tragedies. Wilfredo Ruiz thinks the focus should be, rather, not on the killer’s motives, but on what the government is “doing to keep citizens safe.” But how can you “keep citizens safe” unless you understand the motives of Muslim terrorists? And Ruiz presumably disapproves of one of the things the government has done “to keep citizens safe”: it has grounded Saudi trainee airmen until they can be vetted more thoroughly.
Isn’t the most important way for the government to “keep citizens safe” by investigating what led Ashamrani to commit his murders? The “focus,” Ruiz claims, should not be “on one religion.” Why not? According to his uncle, Ashamrani was a pious Muslim. He tweeted his hatred of America and Americans because of what he claimed were wars made on Muslims, as well as American support for Israel against Muslims. Friends described him as “becoming much more religious” when he returned to Pensacola in February from a visit to Saudi Arabia. Throughout the world, there have been two decades of incessant terrorist attacks by Muslims against non-Muslims, akin to that in Pensacola. Given all this, wouldn’t it be foolish of investigators not to focus on “one religion” — the religion of Islam?
“There are tens of thousands of Muslims in America who put on their fireman uniform, deputy, armed force uniforms, or suits for our intelligence offices that are on, a daily basis, willing to give their lives for fellow citizens and nation,” Ruiz said.
No one has denied that there are Muslims in America who work as firemen, policemen, in the military, or intelligence services. But this is irrelevant to the matter at hand: should the Saudi airmen in this country be allowed to fly before being vetted more thoroughly, given the Pensacola killings by one of their number?
Senator Rick Scott has called for the foreign national training program to stop, pending a thorough review of the vetting process.
“Step one, we’ve got to understand how we need to vet better. Step two, until we know what’s going to happen, we ought to just shut down the program. We shouldn’t be putting people at risk. The next thing that ought to happen is the Saudi government needs to fully cooperate and they need to say they are absolutely committed to if anybody’s done anything wrong, holding them accountable,” Scott said, “There’s wonderful people here in this country from all over the world, Florida is a melting pot, but there’s also radical Islam and we’ve got to deal with radical Islam.
Senator Scott sensibly says that the program training Saudi students needs to be re-examined. What is the background of the students? Have they displayed any antipathy to non-Muslims? Have they shown an interest in previous terror attacks? What have they said on social media about Unbelievers? About Americans in particular? Will the Saudi government supply what information it has about the religious beliefs of these trainee airmen? What mosques did they attend, and how devout were they? What was meant by his fellow Saudis when they described Ashamrani as becoming “more religious” when he returned from a trip to Saudi Arabia in February? Until much more is known about each of the Saudi airmen, they should be kept out of planes; one can well imagine the damage a terrorist in the cockpit could cause. But part of that vetting should include an investigation into what those students have been taught in Saudi schools, with its textbooks full of antisemitic and anti-Christian teachings. And such investigation should also examine the Qur’anic verses that command Muslims to wage violent Jihad on non-Muslims. How likely is it that devout Saudi Muslims will ignore, rather than heed, such commands? Can we trust the Saudi government to discuss truthfully with American investigators the contents of the Qur’an, or will the most important influence on Alshamrani, his faith, be minimized or ignored?
There’s no word on how long the Saudi students will remain restricted to the base.
Ashmawi wants the focus to remain on the heroes who fought back and lost their lives on Friday morning.
Of course Salma Ashmawi wants everyone to turn their attention away from the Saudi killer, and focus on those whom he killed, or rather, on their acts of heroism and not on their identities, as perceived by Alshamrani. For the victims can tell us one thing about the motives of the Muslim killer: he wanted to kill Infidels. That one of the victims turned out to be a Muslim was strictly an accident.
The FBI has also reaffirmed the Saudi government’s cooperation as they continue their investigation into what they’re presuming is an “act of terrorism.”
The Saudi government’s “cooperation” will not include a truthful discussion of what Ashamrani learned from Saudi textbooks about non-Muslims, nor of what the Qur’an commanded him to do. Instead, it will probably consist of making his relatives and friends available for questioning; they will to a man express their puzzlement at his acts, wondering how any devout Muslim could have done such a thing. No one will be impolite enough to remind them that 36,000 devout Muslims “have done such a thing” — a terror attack — since 9/11. And the Saudi press has already condemned him as having betrayed his faith and the trust of his country, “which spent millions on his education.”
Islam’s texts and teachings, which were what prompted his attack, are not going to be mentioned by the Saudis. And the FBI, now politically correct, will not wish to put Islam itself in the dock. Any agent that did so might be accused by CAIR of “islamophobia” and his career jeopardized. Nearly twenty years after 9/11, the American government has still not dared to present to the American public the Qur’anic verses that prompted both that atrocity, and all of the other terror attacks carried out since by Muslims on Infidels, including that in Pensacola. The all-purpose charge, never explained, will be trotted out: Alshamrani was “radicalized” or “self-radicalized.” No effort will be made to explain what “radicalization” means, and how the faith of a “radicalized” Muslim differs — if it does — from what mainstream Islam teaches. But at least the faith of “Islam” and its putative mutant, “radicalization” will be discussed as if they are two distinct phenomena. No one will learn that it is merely a matter of fervor that distinguishes the two; the “radicalized” Muslim differs from the mainstream Muslim only in this: he is the one who is willing to act on what Islam teaches, that is to fight, to kill, to smite at the necks of, to strike terror in the hearts of, Infidels.
What Salma Ashmawi should have said, but did not, was this: “First, we have received no reports of any attacks or threats of attacks made against Muslims, and there is not the slightest reason for Muslims in Florida to vary their ordinary routine. Students should attend Muslim Sunday school, and worshippers should go to their mosques, as they always do. Second, we understand why the government has ceased operational training for Saudi trainee airmen. Given the government’s failure to have detected any problem with Mohammed Alshamrani, it is taking no chances with other Saudis, who will be subject to a much more thorough vetting process. It makes perfect sense to keep those airmen grounded until that process is complete. They will still, of course, be allowed to take part in classroom training. And it should be noted that all 5,200 foreign military personnel now receiving training in this country, whatever their religion or nationality, will be subject to re-vetting at the same time. Third, we hope that the Saudi government will fully cooperate with American investigators in determining what prompted Alshamrani’s terror attacks. Let them provide his schoolbooks for examination, and the exact editions of the religious texts – Qur’an, Hadith – he would have read and studied.
Could Salma Ashmawi conceivably have said any of that? Of course not. She’s too busy feeling sorry for herself and for all the other Muslims “here and abroad” who are now the victims – as happens after every terror attack by someone who has been “radicalized” – of the “fear and anger” directed at them by reflexively bigoted Unbelievers.