Terror experts: Mosque attack not motivated by 'Islamophobia'

British Prime Minister Theresa May addresses the nation after the attack at the Finsbury Park Mosque June 19, 2017.

While politicians often are reluctant to assign motives to major violent attacks until an investigation is at least underway, British Prime Minister Theresa May quickly branded the man who plowed a van into a crowd of British Muslims exiting the Finsbury Park Mosque in London as a product of "Islamophobia."

Alluding to two recent terror attacks carried out by Muslims, May said the incident early Monday in which one person was killed and at least 10 injured was “a reminder that terrorism, extremism and hatred take many forms; and our determination to tackle them must be the same whoever is responsible."

"As I said here two weeks ago, there has been far too much tolerance of extremism in our country over many years – and that means extremism of any kind, including Islamophobia," the prime minister said.

But counter-terrorism expert Andrew McCarthy contends 47-year-old Darren Osborne is not an “Islamophobe.”

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The scene of the attack at the Finsbury Park Mosque in London June 19, 2017.

“Islamophobia,” writes McCarthy for National Review, is "a smear label dreamed up by the Muslim Brotherhood, designed to demagogue any legitimate concern about Islamic doctrine as irrational fear and, of course, as racism."

Osborne, he said, "is a vile specimen of anti-Muslim hatred."

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"His hatred does not render Islamophobia real. It does not convert into hysteria our worries that a sizable percentage of Muslims — for reasons that are easily knowable if one simply reads scripture and listens to renowned sharia jurists — construes Islam to endorse violence against non-Muslims and to command the imposition of oppressive sharia," said McCarthy, who as an assistant U.S. attorney led the terrorism prosecution against Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and 11 others for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

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"We must be of one voice in condemning Osborne’s attack, and urging that he be swiftly tried and severely punished. But we must not allow righteous outrage over the attack to dupe us into adopting the Muslim Brotherhood’s false 'Islamophobia.' narrative," he said.

McCarthy noted the attack is being unanimously condemned.

"The story tomorrow, just as today, will be his attempt to carry out mass-murder, not anxiety over potential 'blowback' attacks against non-Muslims. Would that all terrorist attacks were regarded this way."

He pointed out the allegation of "Islamophobia" was instantly made by Harun Khan, general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, which "purports to be the face of 'moderate Islam' in the U.K., notwithstanding its close ties to such sharia supremacist organizations as Jamaat-i-Islami and the Muslim Brotherhood."

'Supine response to jihad'

The term "Islamophobia" is regularly employed in the United States by the Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, which was founded by Muslim Brotherhood leaders.

CAIR, regarded by the FBI as a front group for Hamas, was named by the Justice Department as an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas-funding case and designated by a Gulf Arab state as a terrorist organization.

But the group recently published a report cited by establishment media claiming a vast “Islamophobia network” is marginalizing Muslim Americans.

PM Media co-founder and blogger Roger Simon noted the "Islamophobe" smear is effective because no one wants to be accused of being a racist.

Syed Farook with his wife, Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 people at a Christmas party in San Bernardino, California.

It has turned out to be a weapon for jihadists, he said, such as the perpetrators of the 2015 attack in San Bernardino, "where people didn't want to report the bomb-makers next door lest they offend someone (or get their own throats cut in the process)."

"They saw something, but fear of being called an Islamophobe prevented them from saying something," Simon wrote regarding the attack by Syed Farook and his Saudi-born wife, Tashfeen Malik, in which 14 people were killed and another 22 injured.

According to a 1997 report published by the left-wing British think tank Runnymede Trust titled "Islamophobia: A Challenge for us All," the term, which literally means an irrational fear of Islam, was coined in the late 1980s and first appeared in print in the U.S. in 1991.

CAIR has a dedicated website, islamophobia.org, that defines it as "a closed-minded hatred, fear or prejudice toward Islam and Muslims that results in discrimination, marginalization and oppression."

Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch, wrote Monday that if Prime Minister May "really wants to stamp out 'Islamophobia,' she could do it easily by working swiftly and honestly against the jihad threat, rather than accommodating and appeasing Islamic supremacists at every turn."

"It is that appeasement, not truthful counter-terror analysis, that incites vigilantism," Spencer said. "If she dealt with the jihad threat in any effective way, then there would be no more attacks like this one."

Spencer said May and her government, "due to their supine response to jihad, bear the ultimate responsibility for the horrific incident at the Finsbury Park Mosque."

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