When we read a recent report from Pew Research Center noting that 53 percent of Americans are "very concerned about Islamic extremism in our country," we chalked it up to irrational fear. Then came last week's shootings in Chattanooga, at both a military recruiting center and a nearby Navy operations support center.
Had 24-year-old Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez not been the perpetrator of the attack that killed four Marines and a sailor, we might think it simply, tragically a random act of violence.
But Abdulazeez, it turns out, was an Islamic extremist. And it is not irrational for Americans to fear that there are others who, like Abdulazeez, appear on the surface to be a "good kid" or "a great student"--as the shooter was characterized by those who thought they knew him--but in whose breasts beat hearts of darkness.
Indeed, last week's bloodshed in Chattanooga is just the latest jihadi attack on U.S. soil since Sept. 11, 2001.
In November of 2009, U.S. Army psychiatrist Nidal Malik Hasan shouted "Allahu-akbar" before opening fire in a medical facility at the Fort Hood, Texas, military base, killing 13 people and wounding more than 30 others. And, in June, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad committed a drive-by shooting at Little Rock, Ark., recruiting office, killing one soldier and wounding another.
In 2013, there was the Boston Marathon bombing, perpetrated by brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, which took the lives of four people. In 2014, an Oklahoma woman was beheaded by aspiring jihadist Alton Noel, who injured another person.
We are confident there was no direct link between the jihadist killers. But there is no denying that the attacks committed by these apparent lone wolves represent a terrifying pattern about which the American people understandably are very concerned.
That's why we think the Justice Department's Domestic Terrorism Committee--suspended in 2001 as the focus shifted to terrorists outside the U.S., but revived last year--should concentrate its attention on the Islamist extremists within our midst.
That does not mean mass surveillance of the Muslim community in this country, the vast majority of whom are law-abiding citizens who offer no succor for those among them who would commit acts of terror. It means ferreting out those who are closeted jihadis, who aim to do the people of this nation harm.
Editorial on 07/25/2015