The museum opens in May so I’m assuming we’ll see more of this, especially by CAIR and their lib allies.
The Rhetoric of “Islamic Terrorism” and the September 11 Memorial Museum — Todd Fine/Medium
Scheduled to open on May 21, thirteen years after the attacks, the September 11 Memorial Museum at the World Trade Center site promises to become one of the most visited and influential cultural institutions in the United States. Although built with around 1 billion dollars in federal grants and other government support, the memorial operates as a private foundation, immune from public input on its exhibition content.
The curatorial team made numerous politically-charged decisions in the design of the museum’s permanent exhibition, and one of the most sensitive, and likely subject to substantial international scrutiny, will be the characterization of Islam in relation to the ideology of al-Qaeda. Islam is the religion of nearly one-fourth of the world’s population, and tying the beliefs of 1.6 billion people to the actions of a small group would be highly reckless in such a prominent setting. Therefore, I was alarmed to discover that the museum has indeed chosen to conflate terrorism and religion, with their advance materials using the highly problematic term “Islamic terrorism.”
In a section that addresses terrorist attacks before September 11, their website states that the bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000 “had a significant impact on America’s view of the threat of Islamic terrorism.”
Leading scholars like Mark Juergensmeyer and Richard Jackson, who study the religious motivation of groups such as al-Qaeda, condemn the use of the phrase “Islamic terrorism” as sloppy and simplistic. Even if self-proclaimed Muslims are responsible for a particular violent act defined as terrorism, this does not make the action “Islamic” in any logical sense. John Brennan, President Obama’s former counterterrorism advisor and the current Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, argued in 2010 that “Islamic terrorism” should be banned from White House communications completely. He suggested that “describing our enemy in religious terms would lend credence to the lie propagated by al-Qaeda and its affiliates to justify terrorism, that the United States is somehow at war against Islam…. After all, Islam, like so many faiths, is part of America.”
HT: Jay