Last night’s Fox/Google GOP debate, without the court jester, was finally a substantive conversation. I appreciate moderators who aren’t afraid to ask tough questions and not accept canned responses. Unlike the disastrous CNBC GOP debate, Fox’s Kelly, Baier, and Wallace didn’t rely on presenting lies in the form of a supposed objective questions.
But Fox failed miserably with one particular question. Their partnership with Google brought a young, Muslim Youtube “activist”, Nabela Noor, to the debate via video. She asked the following question: "In 2015, the number of hate crimes against Muslims in the U.S. has tripled and on social media, where I spend a lot of time, I've seen many attacks directed towards fellow Muslims. This culture of hatred is only driving ISIS to radicalize, recruit, and incite violence. As president, what would you do to address this toxic climate and promote increased tolerance in the United States?"
One would think a news network would fact-check a question for a Presidential debate. In an effort to appear “diverse” or to try to embarrass the absent and unfortunate frontrunner Donald Trump (who has expressed unapologetic, absurd, and sometimes unrealistic views about combatting Islamic terrorism) no one bothered to notice the premise of the question.
First of all, as someone who is half white and half black (or simply just American) I hate the label of “hate crime”. The only action that is not a hate crime today is violence targeted toward a white heterosexual male. Apparently, that kind of behavior is some form of retributive, racial and gender justice according to the subscribers of nonsensical “White Privilege” ideology. Who commits verbal or physical violence toward another out of love, anyway?
That being said, there are no hate crime statistics for 2015. The FBI is the source of this data, and the latest available are from 2014. The last three years reveal a slight increase in hate crimes targeted at Muslims, but unless she’s using some form of common core math, the increase is miniscule, not tripled. Context is always important. In 2014, 16.1% of the 1,140 victims of religiously based “hate crimes” were targets of anti-Muslim bias. That’s a total of 184 people (of what specific nature, we don’t know). Out of a nation of nearly 320 million, that’s .00006 percent of the American population targeted with nebulous “hate”. (Keep in mind, New York City now wants to fine people for hate crimes if they wrongly refer to a biological male/female who is “transgender” as “he”, “she”, “him”, or “her”. Pronouns are not hate speech). In 2013, 14.2% of hate crimes based on religion were victims of anti-Muslim bias; in 2012, it was 12.8%. Just to give perspective, victims of anti-Jewish bias comprised 56.8% of that year’s victims. But no one addressed that in the debate.
Quite honestly, when we see Islamic terrorism domestically and abroad, it’s surprising the restraint that Americans have shown. And why is that? Because we are a nation of tolerance even in the face of such despicable violence that is perpetrated, worldwide, by predominantly one religion—Islam. This doesn’t even include the vile subjugation of women (in varying degrees) in every Muslim nation. I don’t want to hear about tolerance from a Muslim activist, living in the freest nation on earth, touting the most demonstrably oppressive religion on earth.
So, Ms. Noor is free to make up her accusations like she makes up herself in her YouTube cosmetic videos, but she shouldn’t be given a platform of such serious import to spread her Islamaphobia propaganda. This is a Presidential debate, not a high-school cafeteria convo.
She, and many liberal activists like her, suffer from factophobia. They will throw out any false accusations to advance an agenda. I realize this is an inherent aspect of politics, but the Left has mastered the art of BS (bogus stuff). Noor’s Youtube video, Dear America, is an exercise of comparing apples with steaks. She invokes the crazed Westboro Baptist funeral protestors’ hate speech to the fatal violence of terrorism. The San Bernadino Islamic terrorists didn’t hold picket signs. They held guns and massacred 14 people and seriously injured 22. She blames mass shootings, here in America, on white Christian males. Not sure who she’s talking about. Facts don’t matter to Bernie Sanders fans, which is easily seen by her inclusion (in her “Dear America” video) of a bogus Donald Trump tweet stating: “Muslims should be treated no differently than sex offenders.” Truth is irrelevant in liberals’ quest to promote Islamophobia garbage. Sadly, individuals like her spew fact-less rhetoric while ignoring the fact-filled reality all around us. If she’d like to see a list of attacks (just on our soil) by those professing Islam, she can see the tragic and growing body count here.
In the end, Islamic terrorism claims the lives of tens of thousands worldwide, every year. And not because of Donald Trump or any other politician. Islamic terrorism goes back centuries. It’s not fear of Islam that drives many to denounce such violence. It’s humanity.
I don’t hate Ms. Noor for embracing the deeply oppressive religion of Islam. The only thing I hate is that she pretends to be a victim while those who’ve lost loved ones to the “religion of peace” have to endure evangelists of victimhood call Americans “hateful” and “intolerant”.