Terrorist-Enablers in Celebrity Land Will Take Hits, Too

Nineteen people have been confirmed dead and around 50 others are injured following reports of multiple explosions after an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester in the North of England on Monday Evening. Greater Manchester Police originally said there had been a “number of fatalities and others injured” at the Manchester Arena, where Grammy-nominated pop singer Ariana Grande was performing. Nineteen people were confirmed dead as of 8pm EST.

Eyewitness accounts posted to social media show convoys of ambulances moving to the centre of Manchester as thousands of music fans fled the Manchester Evening News Arena. There are no claims regarding the attack yet, but ISIS-supporting social media accounts have been reported to have been “celebrating” the incident…

How ironic. I don’t know anything about pop singer Ariana Grande, including her political views. But I’m willing to bet she’s a hard core leftist. And hard core leftists are the first to morally condemn anyone who challenges the rationality of calling terrorists what they wish to be called: Islamic-inspired defenders of Allah.

I wonder how it feels to fill a stadium with fans of your music, only to have that stadium and many of your fans blasted to bits by the very thing you’ve spent your free time and public stature defending? I’m not necessarily talking about Ariana Grande here (whose views are unknown to me), but I am talking more generally about virtually every rock star or movie/television/theater celebrity on either side of the Atlantic. I will not be surprised to learn she’s the same.

Those of us who keep saying we have to fight back against terrorism at some point are always on the defensive. Yet what about those who excuse, tolerate, morally shame and even legally threaten those who wish to have an honest discussion about Islam, Islamic violence and what it might be about that faith that gives rise to such violence, over and over and over again? You’re shamed for even bringing up the topic or asking the question. What are the shamers really defending? It certainly cannot be the social conservatism of Islam. These leftist celebrities are feminists, secularists and advocates of things that would get you jailed or beheaded in a Muslim country. It has to be something other than the ideological content of Islam they hold valid. It’s time for those of us on the other side to put them on the defensive and demand that they explain why they enable and excuse such behavior.

If we’re not permitted to have an honest discussion about Islam and why it leads to so much violence, perhaps we can at least start a discussion about why Islamic terrorism has so many enablers, excusers and apologists among people who will never be accepted by Muslims? Why are those with the most to lose at the hands of such terrorism the ones who scream the loudest in morally defending their would-be destroyers? It’s enough to fill a doctoral dissertation on psychology, just for starters.

Assuming this latest act of public brutality is ISIS or Islamic-inspired – gee, what are the odds? – you have a particularly dramatic example of how powerful ideas are. The wrong kind of ideas can lead to actions that will get you killed. And yet the musicians and artists are the ones who keep defending those ideas the loudest.

Somebody needs to warn these celebrities, actors and musicians who try to shame us into political correctness: Tolerance of the intolerable — and of the intolerant — is going to get you killed.