Dude, Where's My Backlash?

It's been six days and counting since the Muslim terrorist went on his murderous rampage at Fort Hood and the much-anticipated "backlash" by crazed, frothing teabaggers against innocent Muslims just hasn't materialized yet. Everywhere you turn, weak-kneed liberals tremble and quake, hoping none of the innocent Al Qaeda wannabes in our midst dare think they're dreaded Islamophobes. After all, just to be considered anti-Muslim is obviously a fate worse than having your head chopped off.

So we must ask: Where's the backlash?

Nearly a week after the Fort Hood massacre, the anti- Muslim backlash that our leaders and some in the media feared remains a no-show.

No mobs of braying bigots marching on mosques; no calls for banning Muslims from the military; no anti-Muslim legislation being drafted in Congress or state capitals; no spate of attacks on Muslim students, shop owners, or neighborhoods.

What happened? What's holding the angry, red-blooded vigilantes in check?

Why, if this keeps up, we might have to conclude that the United States is a remarkably fair-minded society as opposed to the cauldron of seething prejudice that many enlightened persons apparently perceive.

Perhaps their view explains why, after a jihadist incident of this kind, some feel compelled to treat Americans like youngsters who cannot be trusted to react appropriately to the truth — and so must be told a clipped or shaded version of it.

"We cannot fully know what leads a man to do such a thing," the president cautioned the nation last weekend, while mentioning Islam only in the context of praising the diversity of the armed forces. In fact, we cannot fully know what spurs any evil man into action, but we often have an excellent fix on his principal motives. And such is certainly true of an Army major who shouts "Allahu akbar" before a murderous rampage.

The president even delicately sidestepped the "T-word" yesterday in his speech at Fort Hood, a speech that has left his media admirers gushing with praise, even causing leg tingles in one observer. Yet while there is no backlash and likely won't be one, one thing we can be assured of: There will be another terrorist attack by a Muslim on our soil and you know what will happened after that?

Why the media will quiver and fret over--you guessed it--a backlash. They never do learn from experience. If it didn't happen after 9/11, I suspect it never will.

Shouldn't this country's experience after 9/11 reassure those who fear a backlash against Muslims? While hate crimes targeting Muslims have indeed been more plentiful this decade than in the 1990s, even in 2001 they were less than half as numerous as reported incidents against Jews, according to the FBI.

The most recent data, from 2007, is typical of most years: Of 1,477 offenses motivated by religious bias, only 9 percent were directed at Muslims. By comparison, even Catholics and Protestants were the targets of 8.4 percent of the offenses. In a nation of 300 million citizens, such paltry totals are hardly cause for panic.

Yet the media's hatred of decent, law-abiding, Bible-thumping Americans so overshadows any fear of actual terrorism. It makes one think they actually hate conservatives more than they do terrorists.