Excerpt:
In their Nov. 12 Times Op-Ed article, "Our enemy is not Islam — it's extremists," Judith Miller and David Samuels wrote regarding the Ft. Hood shootings that "in taking aim at the evasive psycho-babble that dominated early news accounts, the right has engaged in an equally dangerous bias that conflates [Nidal Malik] Hasan's radicalism with the religious beliefs of mainstream Muslims. In their narrative, any Muslim might suddenly 'snap,' as Hasan apparently did, and reveal himself to be the enemy within." They identify me as a proponent of this view. While acknowledging that I added "sensibly that not all Muslims might be so inclined," they assert that I "left it to more primitive commentators to draw the inevitable conclusion that all Muslims in the U.S. military should be viewed as potential traitors."
Miller and Samuels distort, quite egregiously, my views. In a different post from the one they referenced, I wrote:
"To be clear: it is the ultimate red herring, a straw man of gargantuan proportions, to suggest that those pointing to Hasan's ... announced intentions ('I am going to do good work for God') are suggesting that Muslim soldiers as a group are untrustworthy or suspect. No, there is no 'backlash' in the works. What there is, and what elite opinion makers should recognize before the public's fury builds, is that ignoring signs of Islamic-fundamentalist-inspired animus toward America will get people killed. It has. And it will again unless and until we stop tip-toeing around the obvious link between a murderous ideology and murder."