“Domestic terrorism like the attack in San Bernardino last year during which 14 people were killed by two Muslim extremists are the propaganda work of anti-Muslim ideologues like Pamela Geller, the most visible and flamboyant person in the anti-Muslim movement, and the injection of hatred against Muslims, Potok said.” So the SPLC’s Mark Potok would have us believe that if people like Pamela Geller would just stop their “anti-Muslim” propaganda, all would be well and all manner of things would be well: Islamic jihad murderers such as Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, you see, are just driven to it by “Islamophobia.” If we would just be nice to Muslims, then all the jihad would cease.

Besides his execrable viciousness in painting a huge target on Pamela Geller’s back, Mark Potok doubtless doesn’t realize how paternalistic and ethnocentric his claim is. He completely discounts the Islamic texts and teachings that jihadis use to justify violence and make recruits among peaceful Muslims, and places all the blame for jihad murder on the “propaganda work of anti-Muslim ideologues.” So for Potok, Muslims are not capable of acting for reasons of their own; they can only react to what “visible and flamboyant” non-Muslims do, and they aren’t even rational or thoughtful enough to be held responsible for their actions; the responsibility for them rests entirely with the “Islamophobes” who provoked them. For Mark Potok, Muslims are thus not even fully human, as they’re not capable of making decisions for which they can be held accountable. Leftists such as Potok don’t realize it, but they’re as convinced of their own superiority over non-Western, non-white people as any bearer of the “White Man’s Burden” ever was.

“Study: Hate groups on the rise across the U.S.,” by George Mattar, The Intelligencer, February 28, 2016 (thanks to Pamela Geller):