To the extent that there is increasing anti-Muslim feeling in America, I blame Obama and the Democrats

Although we’re hearing a lot from Muslims claiming to be worried about potential anti-Muslim feeling in America, the reality is that their worries are inchoate fears that aren’t grounded in real life experiences.  Indeed, John Hinderaker points out that despite fourteen years of Muslim-related fears, the vast majority of Americans have managed to restrain their alleged Islamophobia:

The FBI’s latest statistics, for 2014, show a total of 1,140 religion-based hate crimes in the U.S. Only 16% (182) were directed against Muslims, about one for every 44,000 Muslims living in the U.S.

Actually, Muslims are more likely to perpetrate hate crimes than to be victimized by them. In 2014, more than half of the religion-based hate crimes–58%–were directed against Jews, and in many instances were perpetrated by Muslims.

I will admit, though, that if I’m to judge by my own Facebook page, which is knee-deep in Progressives, more and more Americans, however unwillingly, are beginning to connect the dots between Islam and terrorism.  Again, they’re not frothing at the mouth with undifferentiated Muslim hatred. Instead, they’re doing what I usually do, which is to distinguish between radicals and everyone else.  Still, they’re finally figuring out that Islam has a problem.

Meanwhile, our President, his party, and his media (let’s not pretend that Obama doesn’t own the mainstream media) continue to deny a connection between Islam and terrorism.  That may change when Obama speaks tonight, although many suspect that the President will use tonight’s speech not only to downplay the Islamic connection to terrorism, but also to try another gun grab.

If, as I suspect, Obama doesn’t change his tune but, instead, continues to pretend that Islam and terrorism are entirely related, I blame him for any future and actual Islamophobia in this country.  Obama has created a leadership vacuum that the American people, who are rightfully fearful that ISIS is in our borders and gaining new recruits from among Syrian refugees, will fill.  And when the masses fill a vacuum, they often do so in crude, mob-like ways.

Obama would protect American Muslims much better if he’d acknowledge the problem with radical Islam and give Americans a detailed plan for dealing with that problem — one that includes requiring the American Muslim community to work with law enforcement to expose and expel the terrorists among them.  Americans then wouldn’t feel that, if they want to protect their lives and liberty, they’re going to have to take Islam on themselves.

Think of it this way:  Obama is the pilot of the plane called America.  We, the People, are the passengers.  We can’t see the captain, but his periodic announcements tell us that he’s up there in the cockpit.  Suddenly, we become aware of a disturbance on the plane.  We look anxiously at the speakers above our heads, waiting for Captain Obama to tell us what’s wrong and how he’s going to fix it.  Instead, we get either silence or a bizarre rant from the cockpit about the bright sunlight outside the plane.

Now imagine you’re on the plane:  Given that your captain has just shown himself to be either absent or insane in the face of a clear and present danger, are you going to continue to sit peacefully in your seat hoping for the best, or are you going to unbuckle your seat belt, search for anything that can possibly be used as a weapon, and go to face the problem yourself?

Captain Obama is failing in his job.  If the American people step up to do what he won’t, and if he doesn’t like how the American people handle the job, he has only himself to blame.