Islamists use false moral equivalence to blunt post-jihad negative PR

In the wake of the recent jihadist murder in London, Editor Sheila Musaji of the American Muslim published an article entitled “Mohammed Saleem and Lee Rigby both victims of senseless, extremist violence.”  In it, she draws equivalence between the brutal murder of soldier Lee Rigby in London, and the brutal murder of a Muslim man in the city of Birmingham, England (not London as she mistakenly writes) the month before:

“Both of the victims were innocent of any wrongdoing.  Both crimes were equally unprovoked, brutal and vicious.  Both victims were killed in a particularly horrific attack.  The families of both victims are suffering equally.  Why then, the difference in public outrage at the perpetrators and interest or compassion for the victims?”

Why the difference?  Because the butchery of Rigby has global political implications. A British soldier was slaughtered in broad daylight and purposely displayed on a busy public street to maximize propaganda value, and then the murderers deliberately told the world about their motivation in detail.  On video.

The more telegenic killer, Michael Adebolajo, made clear that he was murdering in the name of Islam, complete with direct references to the Quran:

…[W]e are forced by the Qur’an, in Sura At-Tawba [the 9th “sura,” or chapter of the Koran] through many ayah [verses] in the Qu’ran, we must fight them as they fight us. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.

He then delivers an explicit threat that no British man, woman, or child would be free from jihadist targeting as long as they refuse to run their government based on the dictates of shariah, rather than popular will:

You people will never be safe. Remove your governments, they don’t care about you. You think David Cameron is going to get caught in the street when we start busting our guns? You think politicians are going to die? No, it’s going to be the average guy, like you and your children.

In stark contrast, Ms. Musaji herself notes that no individual or group has taken credit for the Saleem murder in the month since his death, and that the U.K. authorities are treating it as a ‘possible’ racially motivated attack.  Even if the motivation was racial, the Saleem murderer(s) slinked back into the darkness and stayed silent, as is the typical modus operandi of criminals who are not seeking to make political hay out of their attack.

Islamists in the West are understandingly uncomfortable with condemning jihadist acts, because the jihadists have many of the same goals as their non-violent fellow travelers.  The non-violent Islamists use methods that they believe are more effective than terrorism, including infiltration of civil society, legal intimidation, and media propaganda.  As a matter of strategy, they prefer to focus on the “backlash” against Muslim communities following jihadist events in the West rather than the jihadist events themselves.

The mainstream British press has focused on the “200 Islamophobic incidents since Lee Rigby’s killing,” even though those apparently include thought crimes such as “offensive” Tweets, and an 85-year-old woman yelling in front of a mosque.

Meanwhile, Sheila Musaji has contrived a case of “retroactive backlash,” in which the brutal murder of a Muslim man in April is conflated with a jihadist assault on the very foundations of the British nation a month later.

Even the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood, in the form of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), is trying to inject itself into the exploding U.K. “backlash” scene from across the pond. They have just released new security guidelines for UK mosques through the OnIslam.net website.  The Egypt-based OnIslam.net site openly promotes the religious screeds of the late militant Egyptian Islamist Sayyid Qutb, perhaps the most prominent Muslim Brother in history.

Just another case of Islamists covering for Islamists.  Nothing to see here.