As Islamic terrorist attacks increase in the West, so, too, does the obfuscation of Middle East studies academia. By employing the predictable tropes of poverty, alienation, workplace violence, the need for gun control, bullying, "Islamophobia," and other alleged Western ills, academics avoid assigning responsibility to the actual perpetrators or their Islamist ideology.
Such has been the reaction to the December 2 mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, which authorities were slow to describe as a terrorist attack, despite early evidence that married shooters Syed Rizwan Farooq and Tashfeen Malik had radical sympathies, including with ISIS. This led to speculation that, not coincidentally, omitted the actual culprit.
Omid Safi, director of Duke University's Islamic Studies Center, immediately jumped on the gun control bandwagon and – echoing President Obama's recent gaffe following the latest Paris attacks – claimed that mass shootings occur only in the U.S.: "This is everyday [sic], everywhere in America – and no where [sic] else in the world." He decried America's "deadly fetish" and "gun obsession," urging readers to "Stand up to #NRA," as if the National Rifle Association's adherence to 2nd Amendment rights were the cause of Islamic terrorism.
University of Michigan history professor Juan Cole maintained that "white supremacists" are a greater threat than "al-Qaeda-style terrorism." He disregarded the significance of the terrorists' Middle Eastern names, alleging that they "may or may not be very pertinent to the incident," and condemned "politicians and pundits" for making "hay with the threat of 'terrorism.'" He attributed the perpetrators' motives to the likelihood of "someone going postal over his work situation" or "workplace violence linked to some sort of grievance."
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