FrontPage has a nice compendium of attempts to disparage any role that Islamist ideology may have played in the Boston Marathon bombings including some made by leaders in the US Muslim Brotherhood and their apologists. The article begins:
May 7, 2013 How did scholars of the Middle East and those engaged in moonlighting (non-specialists who write about the region) react to the Boston Marathon bombing on April 15, 2013? Before the smoke cleared, some were predicting that the perpetrators would be ‘right-wingers’ who sought to ‘disrupt tax day,’ ‘neo-Nazis,’ or ‘lone wolves.’ Given that Muslims constitute 30 of 32 of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s list of most wanted terrorists, this represents either wishful thinking or willful blindness. Accordingly, after brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were identified as the perpetrators, scholars resorted to apologetics and obfuscation to explain away Islam’s role: the Tsarnaevs aren’t ‘real’ Muslims; Islam and terrorism are incompatible; Islamic terrorism is no more significant than any other societal ill; ‘Islamophobia’ and a wave of anti-Muslim hate crimes (that has yet to arrive) will ensue; and the attack was an example not of ideologically-rooted violence, but of logical ‘blowback’ against American foreign policy.
What follows is a sampling of such inanity.
Early speculation on the identity of the perpetrators:
Ingrid Mattson, London & Windsor Community Chair in Islamic Studies, Huron University College:
Just paid my U.S. taxes which are due today. Almost forgot because of the attacks on Boston. Did the bombers intend to disrupt tax day?”
And:
If we wake up to the news that the bombers were white men, who should issue press releases condemning the actions?
Read the rest here.
For a more elaborate example of the above, see the following article in Rolling Stone that was tweeted today by Ingrid Mattson, the former President of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA).