Jencunas: Trump, Cruz Comparing America to Europe Post Brussels Attacks is Wrong

Sunday, March 27, 2016

Brian Jencunas, MINDSETTER™

 

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PHOTO: Flckr

The victims’ corpses weren’t even cold when American politicians decided to politicize the Brussels terrorist bombing. Ted Cruz, who criticized President Obama for calling for gun control after a shooting at an Oregon college, promised that when he’s President, police will patrol Muslim neighborhoods to keep us safe from terrorists.

Cruz compared the idea to having a large police presence in neighborhoods with street gangs. This ignores an essential difference. Street gangs have a public presence – selling drugs on street corners, tagging buildings with graffiti, and committing other ongoing, visible crimes – while terrorists plot in secret. Simply walking around Muslim neighborhoods with lots of police will do nothing to expose terrorists. It might make people feel safer in the short-term, but there’s nothing gained from a false sense of security.

Trump was characteristically unsubtle with his post-Brussels message. The Republican frontrunner predicted more attacks, saying “They’re coming in by the thousands and just watch what happens… It won’t be pretty.”

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The comparison between America and Europe is simply wrong. In America, Muslims make up around 1% of the population. American Muslim immigrants are more assimilated into American culture than the average immigrant, and more assimilated than any other country’s Muslim immigrants besides Canada. That statistic wasn’t dreamed up by some left-wing academic. It comes from a study by the conservative Manhattan Institute.

In most of Europe there are far more Muslim immigrants and they are much less assimilated into everyday society. Brussels is particularly bad. The heavily Muslim neighborhood of Molenbeek is a recruiting hotspot for ISIS. The Belgian government admits they have no control over the area. Comparing this to anywhere in America, including heavily Muslim neighborhoods like Dearborn, Michigan, is absurd. It’s not an accident that America doesn’t have this problem – it’s because we are better at assimilating immigrants, especially Muslim immigrants, than European nations. This is one of the great forms of American exceptionalism, which conservatives normally embrace, except when they want to scare people into electing them President.

As a political professional, I give candidates the benefit of the doubt for their unrealistic ideas. Nobody ever won a campaign with sober assessments of the nation’s problems and thoroughly footnoted 10-point plans. Elections are about big themes, which require simplicity. But the ideas from Trump and Cruz aren’t just ineffective, they’re dangerously counterproductive. Overreacting after a tragedy is easy, but it is during times of panic where leaders need to be the proverbial cooler heads that prevail.

Republicans are quick to condemn Democrats who pretend Islamic terrorists are not motivated by militant religious beliefs. It’s just as unrealistic to think that American mosques are teeming with would-be terrorists. There is simply no evidence that a majority, or even a significant minority, of American Muslims have ties to or sympathy for terrorist groups. That doesn’t mean that certain Muslim institutions like the Islamic Society of Boston – frequented by the Boston Marathon bombers and founded by a man convicted of plotting to assassinate a Saudi royal – shouldn’t face scrutiny from law enforcement. That’s common sense, not profiling, just like monitoring far-right, Christian-themed militia groups who threaten to overthrow the government.

What won’t work is treating the average American Muslim like a terrorist waiting to happen. Proactive law enforcement, the only kind that could stop a domestic terror plot before it happens, relies on people who know criminals being willing to cooperate with police to stop crime. This is why the most domestic Muslim terrorists were stopped was by other Muslims informing law enforcement about their plots. 

Militant Islam is a real problem. It provides ideological energy for most of the world’s most dangerous terrorist groups. In Western countries, it seduces people into self-radicalization. It is because of the threat posed by Islamic terrorists that politicians need to be careful not to alienate the majority of Muslims.

Muslims are doctors who heal us when we’re sick, soldiers who fight the wars most Americans only see on television, police officers who keep us safe, and businessmen who create jobs. Calling Muslims terrorists waiting to happen is an insult, an understandable one after the horrors of suicide bombings and beheadings, but still fundamentally wrong. The idea that America would be safer with a massive police presence on the streets of Muslim neighborhoods, or by keeping away every Muslim who wants to come here, is simply untrue.

To their credit, John Kasich, Hillary Clinton, and Bernie Sanders refrained from indulging in knee-jerk scaremongering. Unfortunately, that means they were given far less media attention than Cruz or Trump. When politicians feed ideas that endanger us in the guise of security, they are showing that they will choose cheap political points at the country’s expense. That’s not something that goes away when they win the Presidency, which voters will hopefully understand when they cast their ballots.

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Brian Jencunas works as a communications and media consultant. He can be reached at [email protected] and always appreciates reader feedback.

 

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