Museum Shooting

There appears to have been a mini-blog storm about Debbie Schlussel's column which argues that the climate of tolerance for Islamic anti-Semitism essentially motivated the Holocaust Museum shooter to carry out his crime. I think she has a definite case to make about the shocking rise of anti-Semitism and its link to the politically correct climate around not offending Muslims, but it's a stretch to go from there to "he committed the shooting solely because of it". Perhaps he did feel more comfortable in his hate but there were other factors at play too.

Having said that, the links between white supremiscists and Muslims have been summarily dismissed or ridiculed by Schlussel's critics. She does bring up Hitler's links to the Grand Mufti and also to the Muslim SS Divisions in response. More pertinent to the argument I think would be this more recent news from 2005-

A couple of hours up the road from where some September 11 hijackers learned to fly, the new head of Aryan Nation is praising them -- and trying to create an unholy alliance between his white supremacist group and al Qaeda.

"You say they're terrorists, I say they're freedom fighters. And I want to instill the same jihadic feeling in our peoples' heart, in the Aryan race, that they have for their father, who they call Allah."

That's right - the head of the Aryan Nation wants to join forces with Al Qaeda, reasoning that they two disparate groups have common enemies- the American government and Jews. There's also this report from 2003-

"Western-made terrorists motivated by Marxist, anarchist and neo-Nazi ideology are forming alliances with jihadists and are planning copycat-style attacks and others utilizing funding from Islamists, according to intelligence sources."

Schlussel may have overstated her argument but there is no denying increased anti-Semitism nor is there the "common cause" that white supremiscists feel they have with jihadists.