"The Backlash Industry"

The anti-Muslim backlash that some media and NGOs have been warning about for years has yet to materialize.

Muslims in America: The Backlash Industry - A.J. Caschetta

Addressing the 10th Anniversary celebration of an Islamic advocacy group, Attorney General Loretta Lynch became the latest governmental official to warn of an impending anti-Muslim backlash. In the December 3rd speech, which echoed the admonitions of her predecessor Eric Holder, she took it a step further by vowing to prosecute those who speak or write about Islam in a way that she does not approve.

She described her "greatest fear" as "the incredibly disturbing rise of anti-Muslim rhetoric" and vowed to prosecute speech that "edges towards violence." Lynch's hyperbole is in line with fears of an ever-imminent anti-Muslim backlash that much of the media has been warning about since the afternoon of September 11, 2001. Of course the backlash never came.

The Attorney General's not-so-veiled assault on free speech and common sense ignores the real assault while instead conjuring up hyperventilated fantasies. In fact, American society has been incredibly tolerant of both Muslims and even Islamists – so much so that rather than focusing on the growing evidence of violent Islamists living among them, the majority of Americans seem more concerned about discomfiting their Muslim neighbors or being labeled Islamophobes. Consider the Redlands, California neighbors of the latest Islamist terrorists who were suspicious of the goings on in the Farook/Malik household but kept it to themselves, fearing the backlash that would befall them were they to be accused of "racial profiling" for speaking up.

After the ISIS attacks in Paris on November 13, the media was awash with breathless prognostications about the imminent anti-Muslims backlash: The Atlantic, NPR, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Al Jazeera, The Huffington Post, and many more.

Most Muslim advocacy groups (like CAIR and MPAC) are the prime movers of the backlash myth. In fact, the Attorney General's cautionary speech was given to a group called Muslim Advocates, which describes itself as a "national legal advocacy and educational organization." Her comforting words (to the Muslim audience) and admonition (to everyone else) might have been drawn from the Muslim Advocate's "study" titled "Anti-Muslim Bigotry Rises Alongside Hateful Rhetoric" which, as of this writing, lists 32 events comprising the post-San Bernardino backlash. Many of these purported backlash events are anecdotal. Most of the "assaults" are verbal. Four involve violence against Muslims or people perceived to be Muslims.

So while the left continues with its infantilizing condescension towards the American public, it ignores the FBI's own hate crime statistics which tell a different tale: 60.3 percent of all hate crimes in the U.S. are perpetrated against Jews while 13.7 percent are committed against Muslims.
[Middle East Forum]
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UPDATE:

Americans Aren't Intolerant - Gregg Roman & Gary Gambill

Notwithstanding all the recent media warnings of anti-Muslim backlash, it's worth bearing in mind that exactly two Americans have committed murder linked to anti-Muslim backlash since 9/11 ( Frank Roque and Mark Stroman, both unstable dimwits who mistakenly killed non-Muslims). We're leading the world in tolerance of Muslims.
[The Albany Times-Union via Middle East Forum]
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