The Debate Continues, Why It Matters

Image by D L (WTC Tribute in Light)
via Wikimedia Commons 9/11/10

by Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: The Debate Continues - The debate over whether Muslims in America celebrated during the 9/11 attacks continues. The Trump campaign scored points today when it produced a New York Post column written by Professor Fred Siegel three days after the 9/11 attacks. (How is it that none of the fact checkers and media mavens could find it?)

In the column, Dr. Siegel writes the following:"Here in New York, it was easy to get angry listening to Egyptians, Palestinians and the Arabs of nearby Paterson, N.J., celebrate as they received word of the murderous attack in New York and Washington. But Mayor Giuliani . . . rightly warned New Yorkers that is would be wrong to take their anger out on the city's Arab and Muslim residents. Attacks on Arab-Americans in Paterson or elsewhere are utterly indefensible."Of course, it is true that our anger should not have been aimed at all Arabs and Muslims. But we had every right to be angry at anyone who took pleasure in Americans being slaughtered!

What Dr. Siegel wrote is similar to what I reported last week regarding American Muslims celebrating on 9/11. Numerous readers of this daily report responded with their own experiences and recollections of such events. On CNN today, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said, "People were celebrating, [Trump's] right about that."

Why is this such a sensitive issue and why weren't there more reports about it? Could it be that even back then the media establishment and the political class felt that the most important objective post-9/11 was to suppress the outrage of Middle America -- as if our alleged bigotry was the problem?

(For the record, the U.S. has taken in more than two million individuals from predominantly Muslims nations and the number of mosques in America has nearly doubled since 9/11.)

It isn't only the left that feels an impulse to worry about Muslim sensitivities. I still shake my head in amazement that George W. Bush, on the advice of top aides, visited a major Washington, D.C., mosque less than a week after the 9/11 attacks to reassure the congregation that America was not at war with Islam.

Militant Islamists had just carried out the worst attack on U.S. soil since Pearl Harbor. That was a time for Muslim leaders around the world and in America to ask to come to the White House and for them to publicly state that Islam was not at war with the West.

Why It Matters - Ultimately, this debate about the extent of 9/11 celebrations within the American Muslim community has tremendous implications for our national security. Yet it is being fought so hard by political and media elites because of its implications for immigration reform.

I have said it repeatedly and I will say it again: It is not enough to merely check whether a Muslim immigrant or refugee has blown something up or is a card-carrying member of Hezbollah or the Muslim Brotherhood. (There is evidence we aren't even asking those basic questions.)

We should also be asking to what extent our policies are allowing people to enter the country who hate Jews, Christians and Americans and whose desire is to someday trump the Constitution with Sharia law. Not doing so is the worst type of incompetence and misfeasance.

But just for the sake of argument, let's remove 9/11 from the equation. Let's just think about today. Does anyone really want to argue that there isn't a meaningful number of Muslims in the country who cheer our enemies?

The FBI tells us that there are ISIS sympathizers in every state of the union. A new report says that Islamic radicalism in the U.S. is at "unprecedented levels."

Jihadists have carried out a series of attacks in America in recent years, which the media and political establishment have downplayed. Scores of Islamist plots have been thwarted.

This is one reason there is such simmering grassroots discontent in the country. At no time did either political party ask the American people, "We think it is a good idea to bring in large numbers of Muslims from nations which have major political problems. Is everyone on board with this?"

I guarantee that if the political class had presented that question to the public, the response would have been a resounding, "NO!"

But we don't have to speculate. Obama's Syrian refugee policy is a good substitute. In recent days, three polls (here, here and here) have found overwhelming opposition to it.
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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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