The recent terrorist attack (14 dead, 35 injured) in New Orleans by a homegrown former soldier, Shamsud Din Jabbar, who had “become radicalized” by ISIS has called America’s attention to the threat of Islamic extremism in the USA.  Has the enemy without become a serious enemy within?  And if so, what can be done to protect ourselves from further atrocities? 

We previously contended with the murderous events of 9/11 (2001), with downed planes and 3,000 dead; the Washington sniper and his pal (10 killed in 2002), who liked to pick off people at gas stations; the Fort Hood massacre (2009) of our soldiers (13 killed) by a radicalized army psychiatrist; the Tsarnaev brothers setting off explosions at the Boston marathon (3 killed, over 280 injured, and 12 amputations in 2013); the San Bernardino mass slaying (2015, 14 killed and 22 seriously injured) of Christmas partygoers who worked on behalf of the developmentally disabled; and the Chattanooga shooter (2015, 4 dead), who attacked an army recruiting center.  In addition, there was the Islamic attempted hit in Texas on Pam Geller (2015), who had the audacity to have an art show with drawings of Mohammed, which for certain Islamics was worse than not being halal.  But the murderers who intended to shoot up the entire gathering were themselves finished off by alert locals.

The above events were against the overseas backdrop of Islamic terrorist attacks on Americans at Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 of our beloved servicemen, in 1996.  In 1983, 241 U.S. soldiers were killed in suicide attacks in Beirut, Lebanon.  And many other nations throughout the world suffered similarly.

Is there any question that Islamic terrorism is a threat to worldwide security?  Is there any question that increasing the number of Islamic immigrants increases the threat of murder and mayhem in our society?  Between 1979 and April 2024, 66,872 Islamist attacks were recorded worldwide.  These attacks caused the deaths of at least 249,941 people.  In the 21-year 1979–2000, there were 2,194 attacks and only 6,817 deaths, but in the less than 11 years from 2013 to April 2024, there were 56,413 attacks and 204,937 deaths.

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A distinctive of these large, un-American campus demonstrations was the presence of tents occupied by many students.  Tents have not been a mainstay of previous campus demonstrations going back to the civil rights demonstrations (which, by the way, were demonstrating for civil rights and not against white people).  This writer believes that the tents were symbolic of identity with Arab people.  The attempt to portray the demonstrations in their ethnic/religious dimension is not only averse to the “melting pot” ideal of American life, but an attempt to elevate the desert-life, nomadic existence of many parts of the Arab world into a place of honor it does not hold in Western civilization.  Many students were wearing keffiyehs (head scarves common in the Arab world).  The tents and the Muslim attire of students demonstrating introduced a wanton hatred of Western mores, religions, and cultural commitments that went far beyond protesting the Middle East conflict between Israel and some of her Arab neighbors.

By including tents, keffiyehs, and female head coverings, demonstrators also revealed themselves to be anti-Western and anti-American. These dimensions of demonstrator hostility are both novel and dreadful.

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