My latest in PJ Media:
In the wake of the recent jihad attack in Vienna, Austrian authorities are cracking down on Muslim organizations that have been discovered to be exhorting or approving of jihad terror activity – and Georgetown University’s Hamas-linked Bridge Initiative is not happy. On Thursday, it published a weepy self-pitying piece entitled “Xinjiang and Kristallnacht in Austria: Freedom of Religion Under Threat” by Farid Hafez, a political scientist in Austria who sees in Austria’s counterterror measures nothing less than a new Holocaust on the horizon. Of course! Why else would anyone oppose jihad violence, other than out of a desire to perpetrate genocide? This is what passes for academic discourse at Georgetown these days.
“On November 9 of this year,” Hafez intones solemnly, “the Austrian government commemorated Kristallnacht of 1938—known as the ‘Night of the Broken Glass’—a series of coordinated attacks against Jews throughout Nazi Germany and Austria that took place on the ninth and tenth of November. Jewish homes, educational institutions, hospitals, and businesses were destroyed and over one thousand synagogues were burned.”
Despite this commemoration, however, Hafez claims that “historians and political analysts argue Austria has never fully reckoned with its Nazi past.” One principal sign of this persistent dalliance with Nazism, as far as this intrepid political analyst is concerned, is that Austria is actually fighting back against jihad violence: “On November 9,” Hafez writes, “the anniversary of Kristallnacht, Austrian security forces and the secret service raided the homes of thirty Muslims and even more Muslim institutions, allegedly” – allegedly! – “to combat political Islam. The organization Palestine Solidarity Austria was first to reveal their ordeal on November 9, 2020, along with a list of those whose homes were raided and the questions posed in interrogation. The questions reveal the direction of the government’s future policies on Muslims and Islam. These policies are not about helping Muslims—quite the opposite.”
Well, that all depends on what your definition of “helping Muslims” is. If it’s turning a blind eye to jihad rhetoric and activity, then these raids were definitely not helping Muslims. But if they were in service of protecting a peaceful and free society, then they help Muslims as they do everyone else.
But for the Bridge Initiative, and for highly politicized “academics” such as Farid Hafez, no resistance to the global jihad whatsoever is allowed, no matter how tepid, half-hearted, or fantasy-based. It’s all “Islamophobia.”
There is much more. Read the rest here.