Is the Obama Administration More Concerned About Radical Anti-Abortionists Than Radical Islamists?

From The Fox Forum
By Father Jonathan Morris, L.C.

This week we have witnessed two apparently similar drive-by killings by enraged activists. Suspect Scott Roeder has been charged with killing late-term abortion provider George Tiller as he served as an usher in his church. Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad is charged with shooting and killing an army recruitment officer (and wounding another) as the victim stood outside his office. Both cowardly suspects fled the scene. Both men are now in police custody. Both were motivated by what they considered their religious convictions.

"The Obama administration is giving the impression that they consider the threat of additional crazed anti-abortionists, ready to kill abortion providers, to be greater than the threat of additional radical Islamists ready to strike domestic targets."

With the two events having so much in common on the surface, it would seem logical to suggest—-and some in the media are already doing this—that radical anti-abortionists like Scott Roeder offer a threat to our national security that is on par with radical Islamists like Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad. Nobody says this outright, but much of the reporting I have seen assumes crazed individuals with warped religious ideology who act independently of any organized group are just that–crazed individuals — and that they’re basically all alike.

In my opinion, we make a grave mistake if we follow the media’s lead.

Yes, both Scott Roeder and Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad acted independently in their crimes this week. But while Scott Roeder’s ideology was just the fruit of his own psychological imbalance, Abdulhakim’s ideology is shared by dozens of well organized groups and thousands of men and women who have done harm to our country in the past and have sworn to wreak greater havoc on our homeland and military in the future. Proof of this important distinction between the nature of these two tragic events has been the unanimous condemnation of Scott Roeder’s crime by every major pro-life group in our nation. That’s on the one hand. On the other hand, we get nothing but silence from the leaders of the particular strain of Islam that Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad studied in Yemen.

In other words, it is crystal clear that Scott Roeder, the man suspected of killing Dr. George Tiller, in no way represents the pro-life cause he heralded, while Abdulhakim will be considered a hero by many of his fellow Islamists whose cause is the destruction of America and Christianity in particular.

This distinction seems to escape not only our nation’s media but also the leaders at the top of the current administration. In fact, based on their law enforcement decisions and political responses to these two events this week, the Obama administration is giving the impression that they consider the threat of additional crazed anti-abortionists, ready to kill abortion providers, to be greater than the threat of additional radical Islamists ready to strike domestic targets.

Yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the federal government will begin to provide increased security at abortion clinics and for abortion providers. But no announcement was made about increased security of military recruitment centers. With all the intelligence we have about Islamists who want to kill our soldiers, you would think that this recent murder at an Army recruitment center would have deserved at least the same response from the Attorney General.

More significant still was President Obama’s decision to release a statement condemning the killing of Dr. George Tiller and calling for mutual respect in the abortion debate. Notice how in this case President Obama went to the cause of the murder—disrespect for human life. But so far, the President has not seen fit to release a statement rejecting the radical Islamist motivation of Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, even though he is about to embark on a trip to the Muslim world this week, where the killer’s anti-American sentiment was cultivated.

Every murder is wrong and demands our condemnation. Also worthy of condemnation is the administration’s politically correct obfuscation of these two murders. It’s a mistake to treat a handful of crazed anti-abortionists as a greater threat to our national security than the countless faithful followers of a fanatical Islamist ideology that continues to threaten our very existence.