Received a press release yesterday from the American Islamic Leadership Coalition (AILC) condemning the murders of 16 Afghan civilians by a US Army Staff Seregeant.

Nothing earthshaking there. But in distinguishing between the systemic use of unrelenting violence against innocents by "Islamists," and the actions of the US military to "punish" the aberrant crime of an apparently battle-broken soldier, the group, which is significant for staking out a claim to a moderate Islam (unsupported by authoritative mainstream Islamic texts), ventures into might disturbing mental territory.

Yet despite this vivid distinction between Islamist extremists and the U.S. military—which seeks to minimize and prevent civilian casualties in a war zone—we should not lose sight of the possibility that the brutal murders committed in the village of Balandai may represent another manifestation of the “Breivik syndrome,” in which an individual commits a horrific act of violence motivated by intensely anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim sentiments.
 
The combination of relentless acts of violence committed by Muslims with a supremacist political agenda (i.e., “Islamists”)—and the refusal of Western elites to directly explain and address why this is happening—is clearly prompting more and more Europeans and Americans to conclude that Islam itself is antithetical to the West, and that Muslims in general are “the enemy.”  

“If we extrapolate outward from the Breivik and Balandai incidents,” said AILC member C. Holland Taylor of LibForAll Foundation, “both could be warning signs about the growing radicalization of Western opinion, and to the potential for civil conflict in Europe and North America, if we fail to head it off.”
 
“I lay the blame for this polarization at the feet of Islamists, and Western elites who refuse to address the virulent ideology of Muslim supremacism,” said AILC member Tarek Fatah, who helped to establish the Muslim Canadian Congress.  “To fight malaria we need to drain the swamps, not kill individual mosquitoes,” he added.
 
“For the past few years I’ve been warning Muslims that if Islamist extremists commit another major attack on U.S. soil, the retaliation from our fellow Americans may go off the charts,” said AILC member Jamal Hasan of the Council for Democracy and Tolerance.  “It will be a tragedy of inconceivable proportions, if Muslim extremists provoke the West into behaving in a manner similar to that of the Islamists themselves.”

I have allowed the calumnies and twists of illogic to mount up for maximum head-spinning impact. What just happened?

Most significantly, Anders Breivik, the diagnosed paranoid schitzophrenic who massacred 77 people and wounded 151 others in and around Oslo in two terror attacks last summer, has once again been deployed -- as he has so often been deployed by forces of Islam and the Left -- this time by AILC member C. Holland Taylor against "the growing radicalization of Western opinion." Opinion.

In other words, as Taylor declares in this press release -- supposedly written to condemn (gratuitously?) the wholly exceptional, non-doctrinal and outlaw action of a likely battle-fatigued, highly decorated and twice-wounded American soldier (traumatic brain injury and loss of part of his foot) -- the twin terror attacks by a reportedly wealthy madman in Norway are supposed to cancel all scholarly or popular pursuit and cultivation of informed opinion on Islam. Quite noxiously, "the Balandai incident" -- now it's got a moniker --  is being used here to boost Breivik as a weapon in what Hillary Clinton has called a needed campaign of  "peer pressure and shaming" to further censor analysis and opinion drawn from the facts of Islam -- its history, its law, its supremacism, its warlike nature.

The press release continues:

We are certain that the actions of the soldier who committed this atrocity do not represent the implementation of any U.S. policy.  On the contrary, we understand that the U.S. military in Afghanistan operates under strict rules of engagement designed to protect civilian lives and prevent the unnecessary destruction of property. Despite these rules of engagement, we realize that the stress of combat can, on rare occasion, trigger psychiatric illness and inexplicable acts of rage to which our soldiers are not immune.
 
“There is no moral equivalence between the deranged act of a lone U.S. soldier, and the systematic violence and ideologies employed by Islamists to achieve their goals,” said AILC member Dr. M. Zuhdi Jasser of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, who served eleven years as a medical officer in the U.S. Navy. 

No, but according to the AILC, Breivik = "the Balandai incident," both of which are "warning signs" about "the growing radicalization of Western opinion" that the AILC must "head ... off."

Meanwhile:

“Islamist terrorism is fueled by a pervasive ideology of hatred, supremacy and violence, and is completely antithetical to the ethical and spiritual teachings of Islam itself and other religions as well.”

Says which man's Koran?