New study shows that Islam is the subject Americans feel most “pressure to think a certain way about”
Predictably, since he is writing in the Washington Post, Charles Lane blames Trump for this pressure to conform: “For the time being, the president of the United States is openly sowing fear and anger for political gain in the 2018 midterm elections, and his Democratic Party opponents seem increasingly tempted to respond in kind.” This is, of course, ridiculous. The pressure to think a certain way about Islam comes not from Trump, but from the Left, which relentlessly labels anyone and everyone who dares to note the connection between Islam and jihad terrorism as “racist,” “bigoted,” and “Islamophobic.” The Left and its Islamic supremacist allies have successfully intimidated untold numbers of people in the West into thinking that the slightest opposition to jihad terror and Sharia oppression of women, gays, and others is somehow morally wrong, and evidence of some kind of character defect.
I wrote a whole book about this last year, Confessions of an Islamophobe. The fact that Americans fear speaking what they think about Islam more than about any other subject doesn’t surprise me at all — it’s the world I’ve lived in for the last twenty years, and why many people today think of me as some kind of degenerate, solely for reporting on the contents of the Qur’an and Sunnah, the progress of jihad in history, and the actions of jihadis today. I heard recently about a good still-on-the-reservation Leftist recently noted with horror that opposing jihad terror was “worse than the n-word.”
And now this phenomenon has been noted even in the Washington Post, one of the chief perpetrators of this insanity, although true to form, they blame one of the victims instead of settling down for a bit of introspection. In any case, if this stigmatization continues, and there is no sign of its letting up, eventually everyone who speaks about against jihad terror will be destroyed, professionally or personally or both, and everyone else will be frightened into silence, and the jihad will advance unopposed and unimpeded.
Of course, you don’t believe that. Only “Islamophobes” think like that. But just sit back and watch it happen.
“We’re staying silent out of fear,” by Charles Lane, Washington Post, October 15, 2018:
Most ordinary people found it unbearable to live under communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The reasons varied: shortages of consumer goods, incessant propaganda, restrictions on travel.Nothing was more psychologically exhausting than the constant pressure to watch every word one said, and to pretend to believe things one did not, for fear of negative repercussions. Dissidents called this “double morality” or “double consciousness.” It drove people crazy. Actually, it drove some to suicide….Until now, perhaps. A new study of political attitudes in the United States offers stunning evidence that most Americans censor themselves, except among people they regard as like-minded, on a bundle of sensitive topics: immigration and immigrants; race and racism; gay, lesbian and gender issues; and Islam and Muslims.The report by More in Common, a new nonprofit dedicated to understanding and healing political polarization in the United States and Europe, is based on a nationwide survey of nearly 8,000 people conducted this past December and January.It found that between 51 and 66 percent of Americans agree there is “pressure to think a certain way about” each of the aforementioned topics, with immigration seen as the least sensitive and Islam the most.Meanwhile, 68 percent report that “it is acceptable for me to express what I think” about race, or Islam, only among “people who are like me.” On immigration, 73 percent feel that way; on gay, lesbian and gender issues, the figure is 70 percent….For the time being, the president of the United States is openly sowing fear and anger for political gain in the 2018 midterm elections, and his Democratic Party opponents seem increasingly tempted to respond in kind. Hope for more decent and, indeed, freer politics lies in the possibility that members of the Exhausted Majority will wake up and raise their voices.
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