It was a familiar sight early Monday morning in London. A man plowed his hired van into a crowd of people in Finsbury Park, leaving one dead and at least 10 injured. The attack came only two weeks after three Muslims drove a van into a crowd of pedestrians on London Bridge, then got out and stabbed bystanders in pubs and bars in Borough Market.
In fact, vehicular attacks appear to have become an attack method of choice for Muslim terrorists in recent months.
A Muslim used a 19-ton cargo truck to mow down hundreds of pedestrians celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, France, last July. A Tunisian ISIS sympathizer plowed a truck into a Berlin Christmas market in December, killing 12 and injuring 56. And only three months ago, in March, a British Muslim drove a car into pedestrians near Westminster Bridge in London, then got out and fatally stabbed a police officer on the Westminster Palace grounds.
But the Finsbury Park attack was different because this time it was a non-Muslim Welsh driver running over a crowd of Muslims leaving a mosque. Muslims now find themselves the victims, rather than the perpetrators, of a vehicular attack. It gives them a golden opportunity to paint themselves as a persecuted minority, according to former Department of Homeland Security officer Philip Haney.
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Haney told WND that Muslim activists are always "looking for every opportunity to prove that the non-Islamic world is Islamophobic, and this would just be one more example of it from their perspective."
"They have the attitude of an adversarial worldview, that the world is against Islam, and this would just be another example of it," he said.
Haney, co-author of "See Something, Say Nothing: A Homeland Security Officer Exposes the Government's Submission to Jihad," said opposition to the advancement of Islam provides the undercurrent of the global Islamic movement.
"If you have an adversarial attitude toward the world you live in, you're going to have lots of occasions to find reasons to be upset, aren’t you?" he asked rhetorically.
One Muslim witness to the van attack told Sky News the Muslim community did not feel safe going to the mosque anymore. He complained the police had taken an hour to respond, although the London Metropolitan Police disputed that claim.
Harun Khan, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, called for increased security outside British mosques as a "matter of urgency" after the attack. He claimed this crime was only the latest manifestation of the "hugely worrying growth in Islamophobia" directed against Muslims over the past several weeks and months.
The Finsbury Park attack may also be just what the left has been waiting for, according to WND news editor Leo Hohmann.
"Leftists and globalists have been craving right-wing attacks against minorities for years," said Hohmann, author of "Stealth Invasion: Muslim Conquest Through Immigration and the Resettlement Jihad." "The dearth of such attacks has had them really striving to build up this 'Islamophobia' narrative that is based on hateful speech and many false reports of physical abuse, such as a man pulling a Muslima's hijab off at a Louisiana university after the election of Donald Trump.
"But now we have an actual case of violence that appears to have targeted a group of Muslims simply because they are Muslim. I believe this is exactly what many of the globalists embedded in our Western governments have been hoping for for a long time. Why else would they be welcoming thousands of potential jihadists into the U.S., Canada and Europe every year, knowing full well that they have no intention of assimilating, and offering them full license to preach hatred in Western mosques? Such policy makes no rational sense. These migrants are building parallel societies within societies, and the results of that are always disastrous."
Hohmann, who has reported extensively on Islam and immigration, said when a Western city is flooded with non-assimilating migrants, the community automatically becomes divided. On one side are what Hohmann called the "naïve welcomers," and on the other are those who question why their community is being force-fed migrants who don't share the values of the culture in which they now live.
"Over time, these cracks in the social cohesion become like gaping, open sores that fester into boils and eventually pop wide open," he explained. "That's what you are seeing in London now with prospect of tit-for-tat violence between Muslims and non-Muslims."
Darren Osborne, the man suspected of carrying out the Finsbury Park attack, has been described as a "shouty" and "aggressive" person known for "flipping his lid" when he drank too much. His mother claimed he was "disturbed" and had been on medication for mental health problems.
According to the London Telegraph, after Osborne plowed down the Muslims outside the mosque, he jumped out of his van and shouted, "I'm going to kill all Muslims – I did my bit."
He had reportedly expressed increasingly antagonistic views toward Muslims in the weeks since the London Bridge attack.
Not only were Osborne's actions disgraceful, they were foolish, in Hohmann's view.
"People like Mr. Osborne who perpetrate acts of violence against Muslims are really stupid," he said. "ISIS will definitely use him as the poster boy for anti-Muslim persecution in the West. And the Quran teaches that 'fitnah is worse than killing.' [Quran 2:191] Fitnah is a persecution or trial fomented upon the Muslim ummah, and the recommended reaction is often interpreted to be more killing, because fitnah is worse than killing."
Haney also expects ISIS to take full advantage of Osborne's attack.
"It reinforces their basic underlying premise that they are in a conflict with the non-Islamic world," he said.
British Prime Minister Theresa May, in her statement following Osborne's attack, chalked up his actions to "Islamophobia," which she labeled a form of extremism.
Hohmann does not like the term "Islamophobia."
"Let's call it terrorism, extremism, whatever, but not 'Islamophobia' because no other religion, including the most persecuted religion in the world, Christianity, has a comparable word to describe its haters," he implored. "We have a confirmed genocide going on against Christians by Muslims in the Middle East, so until the world figures out how to handle 'Christophobia,' I really don't think it's fair to use the term 'Islamophobia.'"
Nevertheless, Hohmann recognizes Osborne clearly harbored a hatred of Muslims. In Hohmann's view, Christians should share the gospel with Muslims, not reciprocate their attacks.
He pointed out major physical attacks against Muslims have been rare in the U.S., but he fears they could occur here if the U.S. government doesn't rein in out-of-control immigration. After all, it is government policy that has divided Americans into pro-mass migration and anti-mass migration camps.
"We should remember that it is governments inviting these migrants to our shores and not requiring them to assimilate that causes the divisions, not 'hate groups' as the SPLC and CAIR would have us believe," Hohmann advised. "When you looked at those out protesting the arrival of Syrian refugees in Rutland, Vermont, last year, these were regular Americans in a liberal section of our country that just could not see the logic in this policy and did not approve of it. They were pitted against others who said, 'Yes, let's welcome them and label everyone who opposes this policy racists.'
"It's very sad how Americans are being pitted against Americans by refugee resettlement contractors getting rich off government grants and fees. Let's hope and pray it does not end in violence here like it has in London."
Haney similarly believes Western governments can forestall potential terrorists like Osborne if they take the Islamic terror threat seriously. If not, they will create space for vigilantes to lash out with rash, devastating actions.
"Most people are satisfied to allow the government to do what their job is, which is to protect the citizens of their country, and people are pretty reasonable," he said.
"If they see that their government is making a real, true, fair effort, an honest effort, then they're going to give the government the space to do it, the support they need to do it. But if they begin to lose confidence in the government, then, yes, you will see more individuals or groups taking matters into their own hands."
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