Who is Helping ISIS Succeed in Terrifying Americans?

Susanne Posel (OC) : According to Riverside Police Chief Sergio Diaz "3 suspects wearing ski masks and armed with hammers entered the Ben Bridge Jeweler store” at the Gallery at Tyler.

It was the "sound of [the suspects] smashing the glass” which caused a panic inside the mall. Diaz said the smashing glass sound "was mistaken for gunshots” which led to the police being called to the scene.

To make matters worse, 3 residents of San Bernardino were in the Gallery at the time of the incident. One told the local media: "There were definitely two loud bangs which made all the shoppers on the first floor start running for their lives.”

The witness recalled: "The women were kicking off their high heels so that they could run faster and shoppers were dropping their bags and taking off. I called 911 and the line was busy. I tried again and I got through and the person said there were shots fired, please get out of the mall. People were tripping over each other. Several people were trampled. No one tried to help anyone else get up.”

A customer of the M.A.C Cosmetics store said she thought that the mall was "under [a] terrorist attack” because "everyone was screaming”.

She and her niece "were directed by M.A.C. workers into a storage room with a lock and bulletproof doors. There were 24 people in there, including some children who were trembling and crying.”

The reaction of the shoppers and the immediate assumption that the mall was under attack by terrorists is the fruition of years of anti-Muslim rhetoric in the media which is then repeated by politicians and reinforced in the obvious shift in public perspective.

Last month the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) reported that the backlash of anti-Muslim sentiment following the attack on Paris was the fuel that resulted in 2 Muslim women being assaulted by a man who spit in their faces and threatened to burn down their "temple”.

And most recently, Senator Marco Rubio put in his 2 cents when he said that "people are scared not just because of these attacks but because of a growing sense that we have a president that is completely overwhelmed by them.”

Speaking about the recent terrorist attack in San Bernardino, President Obama said ISIS is a "cult of death” that does not "speak for Islam” but represents a radicalized fundamentalist adherence to the religion.

Obama said he did not want to invest in a "costly ground war” because "that’s what groups like [ISIS] want.” The truth of the matter is the president is correct.

According to  journalist Ryan Grim: "Anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim political parties in Europe have stirred up a tremendous amount of Islamophobia there, and such attitudes naturally drive feelings of anger and betrayal. For a young man or woman on the edge, it can be just enough to push them into radicalization, and it’s not a coincidence that Europe has seen far more homegrown attacks.”

Evidence of this rhetoric can be found in the Republican presidential candidates who further the anti-Muslim ideology which is actually terrorizing their future constituency.

Donald Trump took to Twitter to complain that the president does not refer to the Islamic State as he does; calling them ISIS and not ISIL.

Trump also chided Obama for not admitting ‘we are at WAR with RADICAL ISLAMIC TERRORISTS.”

Senator Ted Cruz promised his Christian conservative base that if he is elected president in 2016, he "direct the Department of Defense to destroy ISIS” by shutting down "the broken immigration system that is letting jihadists into our country.”

Senator Marco Rubio complained that the president spent "a significant amount of time talking about discrimination against Muslims” when the evidence backing that assertion up does not exist.

Rubio shared Trump’s disappointment that Obama did not refer to "a war on radical Islam” and consequently have "made things worse in the minds of many Americans.”

In the minds of many conservative Americans, the only solution to ISIS is to blow them into oblivion with a powerful show of military force to teach these radicals a lesson only the US can do.

Ben Carson expounded this point in his response to the president’s address by saying that "without taking the fight to ISIS on the ground, ISIS won’t be defeated.”

Jeb Bush echoed Carson when he called for more aggressive strategies against "ISIS and radical Islamic terrorism.”

ISIS believes that they are fighting a jihad for the second coming of Muhammad. In that battle, 80 nations are prophesied to converge on Muslims. The purpose of their intense social media campaign to radicalize fundamentalist Muslims wherever they may be and the rhetoric from the right-wing is helping them accomplish this goal.

By convincing Muslims in France, the UK and the US that they are hated, will be discriminated against and have their rights impeded upon simply because of their faith is exactly what drives fundamentalism straight into the hands of radicalization.

Journalist and former ISIS hostage Nicholas Hénin explained that because of the bombings, the US, Russia and the French governments "are more likely pushing the people into the hands of ISIS. What we have to do, and this is really key, we have to engage the local people. As soon as the people have hope in the political solution, then Islamic State will just collapse. It will have no ground any more. It will collapse.”

To keep more Muslims from becoming radicalized by ISIS, Hénin pointed to the Syrian refugee crisis and the response of those nations that took in those fleeing from Islamic terrorism.

For the Islamic State to have so many people leaving their Muslim "dreamland” and being welcomed in by "unbelievers”, their justification for jihad had been thwarted because it was based on the concept that western nations hate Muslims.

Hénin said: "That is why they probably tried to manipulate the public during the Paris attack, to make us close our borders, and maybe, even more importantly, to close our minds.”

Susanne Posel, Occupy Corporatism

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