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Title: "The American Islamist Threat Never Left Us"
Source:
National Review
URL Source: https://www.nationalreview.com/2026 ... islamist-threat-never-left-us/
Published: Mar 16, 2026
Author: The Editors
Post Date: 2026-03-16 11:13:18 by Mudboy Slim
Keywords: None
Views: 9
This September will mark 25 years since a group of radical Muslims hijacked four planes, took down the World Trade Center, and killed 3,000 Americans. A quarter century later, most Americans have moved on from worrying about the Islamist threat. But the Islamists never moved on from us. In less than two weeks, we have had four high-profile attacks perpetrated by radical Muslims. On March 1, Ndiaga Diagne, a native of the majority-Muslim West African nation of Senegal, went on a shooting spree at a bar in Austin, leaving four dead and 15 wounded. Diagne had a social media history filled with antisemitic and anti-Christian messages, including one, referring to Iran, that declared, “THE ISLAMIC REVOLUTION IS ETERNAL.” On the day of the attack, he was wearing a “Property of Allah” hoodie on top of an Iranian flag T-shirt. On March 7, two teenagers, Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi, threw improvised explosive devices into a crowd of protesters outside New York City’s Gracie Mansion while shouting “Allahu akbar.” The young men told police that they were inspired by ISIS and had intended for the death toll to be higher than the 2013 Boston Marathon attack. Then, this Thursday, there were two incidents. Mohamed Bailor Jalloh opened fire at an ROTC class at Old Dominion University, killing the instructor. Jalloh was convicted in 2017 of trying to provide material support to ISIS and sentenced to eleven years in prison but was released in December 2024 at the end of the Biden administration. Separately, Ayman Mohamad Ghazali of Lebanon, whose two brothers were members of Hezbollah and were killed in Israeli strikes, wielded a rifle and drove an explosive-laden vehicle into the Temple Israel synagogue in West Bloomfield, Mich., where there were 140 preschoolers. Each of the incidents could have been a lot worse had it not been for heroic actions to neutralize the perpetrators — or sheer luck. In Austin and in Michigan, the attackers were shot dead by law enforcement or security on the scene. At Old Dominion, a heroic ROTC cadet stabbed the assailant to death. And at Gracie Mansion, the bombs simply did not detonate. Still, all of these incidents should be viewed as a wake-up call. We have a significant problem with radical Islam in this country, and unlike the September 11 hijackers, all of the perpetrators in these attacks were U.S. citizens — Ghazali, Jalloh, and Diagne were naturalized citizens, while the Gracie Mansion duo were children of naturalized citizens. It’s quite possible, given the timing of these attacks, that they are a reaction to the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran. While some will try to use that to shift blame onto President Trump’s decision to launch the Iran war, the real question is why these people were in the country in the first place. In the wake of September 11, there was a concerted effort from President Bush on down to avoid portraying Muslims in general as a threat. Yet the fear of being seen as Islamophobic allowed the pendulum to swing too far in the opposite direction. In the Dearborn metropolitan area, where the Temple Israel attacker (a Dearborn Heights resident) lived, they have unapologetically named a street after a journalist who called Hamas and Hezbollah “freedom fighters.” That is, radical Muslims control a city within the United States that is a terror-supporting enclave. As a general matter, the United States should admit fewer immigrants, which would, at the margins, reduce the pool of potential bad actors. We should be even more reluctant about admitting immigrants from societies where there are high levels of anti-Americanism and antisemitism in the population. The process for approving legal immigrants also should include more vetting for anti-American totalitarian political ideologies. None of this, obviously, would be foolproof, but the beginning of wisdom here is admitting that we have a problem. We are likely to see more of these attacks — and unfortunately, one day, the death toll will be much worse.
Law enforcement responds to Temple Israel following an active shooter situation, in West Bloomfield, Mich., March 12, 2026
(Emily Elconin/Getty Images)
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