Bill Donohue comments on the way terrorists are discussed in public life:
It took three stories in the New York Times on Muslim killer Omar Mateen before he was identified as a Muslim. When Robert Dear killed three persons in a Planned Parenthood clinic last year, the first word in the New York Times headline was “Religion”; the reader quickly learned that Dear was Christian.
Thomas Sowell correctly pointed out that “no sooner had blood been spilled at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado than accusations of ‘Christian terrorism’ began to fly across the Internet,” despite the fact that there was no nexus between his religion and his crimes. Indeed, a CBS/AP story concluded, “Those who knew Dear said he seemed to have few religious or political leanings.”
There is a huge difference between Dear and Mateen. Dear’s three wives said he was never a practicing Christian. Moreover, there is no evidence that he ever belonged to a Christian congregation, or that he was ever involved in a Christian community.
Mateen bragged of his links to terrorist organizations, including Al Qaeda, and told his friends of his ties to the Boston bombers. He was known for frequenting a mosque attended by Al Qaeda operatives, and was twice investigated by the FBI.
Unlike Dear, Mateen was devout. He brought a prayer rug and skullcap to work, praying on his knees during breaks. He did not occasionally go to his local mosque—he went several times a week. All of this makes it easy to understand why he called 911, just before he began his rampage, to express solidarity to the Islamic state.
The ACLU reacted to Mateen’s killings by expressing “solidarity with the Muslim community.” When I typed “ACLU expresses solidarity with the Catholic community” in the Yahoo search engine, up popped an article, “ACLU Lawyers Say Christians Caused the Orlando Shooting.” It would be impossible to find a better example of rank bias than this.
