New York City was shocked on Saturday when two Isis-inspired suspects attempted to detonate homemade bombs at an anti-Islam protest outside Gracie Mansion, the official residence of Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The devices, fortunately, did not explode.

Descriptions of the incident by local politicians — including Mamdani — and the press were widely mocked on social media for downplaying or erasing the Islamist terror element of the “counterprotest” and foregrounding the white supremacist, Islamophobic nature of the original protest. At first glance, the confusing headlines might give the impression that “anti-Muslim protesters” had targeted the mayor’s house with bombs.

This spin is characteristic of how liberals tie themselves in knots when jihadists act violently. Even when the perpetrators proclaim their extreme Islamist motives, many on the Left will argue that the violence has nothing to do with religion, that Islam is peaceful, and that the real problem is the inevitable Islamophobic “backlash,” though this violent reaction never seems to manifest itself.

Though New York has a small but voluble contingent of Muslims who have thrown themselves into anti-Israel Third Worldist activism, there is little evidence of radical jihadist energy here. Unlike other cities such as London, Paris, Malmö or Sydney, there is not even a suggestion that any areas of New York are “no go zones” off-limits to non-Muslims. One would be hard-pressed to identify local mosques that are hotbeds of inflammatory rhetoric, and there is no New York City equivalent of Anjem Choudary, the notorious British Islamist preacher now serving a life sentence in prison.

That said, there is still every reason to expect that New York City will continue to be a target for Islamist terrorism, as it has been for decades. The combination of its status as a global financial capital, its large Jewish population, and its density make it a target for violent extremists.

Indeed, the most spectacular exhibitions of terrorism in New York City in recent years have been committed by “tourists.” The 9/11 attacks are an obvious case, but the 2010 attempted bombing of Times Square was attempted by a Pakistani-born Connecticut resident. The 2017 truck attack by an Uzbek Isis devotee, which killed eight people on a lower Manhattan bike path, was planned and prepared in New Jersey. The 2014 shootings of two NYPD officers sitting in their vehicle were committed by an African American Muslim who hated police and who started his day in Baltimore, where he shot his girlfriend before speeding up to Brooklyn to murder two cops. And of course, Saturday’s incident was carried out by Pennsylvanians.

New York is the stage upon which violent maniacs play out the theater of their psychotic fantasies. With a highly visible Jewish population, a high rate of antisemitic hate crime, and a prominent Muslim mayor who makes no secret of his hatred of Zionism, New York City is a natural setting for both Islamists and the Islamophobes who hate them to act out their overdetermined drama.

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Seth Barron’s new book Weaponized will be released in April.

SethBarronNYC

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