From New Orleans Carnage to Global Terrorism: The Cost of Political Correctness

• The jihadi attack in New Orleans exposes the West’s reluctance to confront Islamist extremism due to fears of political correctness and accusations of Islamophobia.
• Western leaders often avoid addressing the ideological roots of terrorism, leaving societies vulnerable and enabling extremist networks to grow.
• Examples from the US, UK, and Europe reveal systemic failures in addressing grooming gangs, terror attacks, and extremist ideologies, prioritizing appeasement over victims’ rights.
• Reformers and critics urge open discussions about ideological links to violence, emphasizing the need to balance critique of Islam as an ideology with respect for individual Muslims.
• Bold leadership and support for internal reformers within Muslim communities are essential to addressing extremism and safeguarding the principles of justice and coexistence.

In his study of social cohesion, American anthropologist Edward T. Hall observed that “Culture hides much more than it reveals, and what it hides, it hides most effectively from its own participants.” He compared culture to an iceberg where only about 10% is visible above the surface, while the remaining 90% lies hidden beneath.

This dual nature of culture poses a significant challenge: How does one navigate a multicultural environment, such as a modern city or a developed nation? At what point does this hidden or sometimes contentious aspect of one culture become offensive to the next one? Also, how does one culture go about notifying the other culture about its vexing issues if the second culture is oblivious to it, or if it believes that the offending issue is a feature and not a bug in its value system? How can the majority culture go about defining the precise rules of engagement in a multicultural society without getting disrespectful and derogatory to other cultural adherents? This problem is much more vexing and critical when considering the massive aftermath of such cultural conundrums. Let me illustrate with an outlier incident – 9/11.

On September 11, 2001, the mastermind of the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers – Mohammed Atta and his colleague Abdulaziz Alomari, were stopped by a US Airways ticket agent, Michael Tuohey, due to suspicion. Atta’s demeanor and the pair’s first-class, one-way tickets to Los Angeles made Tuohey think twice about them. “I said to myself, ‘If this guy doesn’t look like an Arab terrorist, then nothing does.’ Then I gave myself a mental slap because, in this day and age, it’s not nice to say things like this,” Tuohey told the Maine Sunday Telegram. “You’ve checked in hundreds of Arabs and Hindus and Sikhs, and you’ve never done that. I felt kind of embarrassed.”[1]

Are you getting the enormity of this cultural muddle? A routine check that should have been done by the book was unfortunately mishandled for fear of being politically incorrect and culturally insensitive. This misstep ultimately led to a devastating loss of lives and set off a large-scale war on terror. It could have all been avoided if only the lowest link in the chain of command in a long line of duty officers had trusted his training and not become a prisoner of political squeamishness.

The West’s Paralysis in Confronting Islamist Extremism

Like it or not, the debate on Islamist extremism has been the highlight of this New Year 2025, as the year began with a jihadi terrorist attack in New Orleans. Also, Elon Musk of X/Twitter pried open the manhole cover off the overflowing grooming gang sewer in the UK and let out the stench that’s making the stomachs of all the dyed-in-the-wool liberals churn in disgust. Naturally, what followed was the routine blame game and some sanctimonious moralizing in various op-eds and primetime debates.

The question remains: Who is to be blamed for such a royal mess? Should we blame Islam and Islamists? Should we ask the prominent Islamic nations to rein in the propaganda, or should we simply demonize the faith, as is normally being done by the man on the street? Let’s face it: the West can no longer just demand that the Middle East crack down on extremist groups, given that many of these previously criticized nations are now at the forefront of combating terrorism.

During a 2017 Bloomberg TV panel on digital responses to extremism, the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and the UAE were point-blank in their criticism of the West’s approach to addressing Islamist extremism. The UAE’s foreign minister warned Europe that some countries could be classified as “incubators of terrorism” if they fail to better address extremism. Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan said that such countries should be publicly identified if they did not do more to address terror. “Saudi Arabia is more keen to fight terrorism than the… Europeans,” Sheikh Abdullah said, “The voices we hear calling for murder and shedding blood and stealing the wealth of people are in London, Germany, Spain, and Italy.”[2]

Some might consider this a convenient diplomatic or political statement of the Middle East, designed to deviate any future criticism that might come its way, owing to any potential extremist action from its denizens. So, let’s look at the stand of their religious leaders: Well, the highest Muslim authority figure in the world, His Excellency Sheikh Dr. Mohammed Al-issa, the Secretary-General of the Mecca-based Muslim World League, has urged Muslims in the West – especially in the UK, France, and Belgium to integrate, respect local laws, and pledge allegiance to their adopted countries. He has publicly asked Muslims to move to another country if they are not comfortable instead of causing riots and problems. His message of coexistence and tolerance did face a backlash from some of the so-called local “Muslim community leaders,” but he remained firm in his stance.[3]

Compare this with the West’s response to cases of Islamist extremism. Just after the New Orleans carnage, the first public responder team insisted on camera that “it’s not a terrorist event,” despite the vehicle of the perpetrator brazenly brandishing an ISIS flag. Even now, American investigators are loathe to call it an Islamist terror attack. The story of jumbled-up responses and word salads has not been much different on the other side of the Atlantic. In July 2022, a German judge complimented an Islamist Syrian migrant during his trial for raping a 15-year-old girl while she was walking home. The migrant was only given probation as the judge said that the migrant had integrated well in Germany and that the rape intensity was “at the lower end.”[4] Naturally, the public was peeved at the judgment, and a German man mailed the Court, writing how the judge was “clearly mentally disturbed.” He was fined EUR 5000 for insulting the judge. Meanwhile, the Syrian migrant was fined EUR 3000 for raping the girl.[5] Although the gems of German justice don’t end there, another German woman was given a harsher sentence than a rapist for calling him a pig.[6]

Although what would potentially go in a Guinness Book of Records is how Britain nauseatingly responded to the Pakistani-dominated Islamist migrant grooming gangs, raping and ravaging the lives of a potentially million underage girls across the UK. For years, successive British administrations consistently ignored the grooming gang scandal, allowing the perpetrators to carry out widespread exploitation of underage British girls on an industrial scale. All investigations into the scandal were throttled from the top, whistleblowers were put in jails, and the parents of the victims were punished for wanting justice.[7] In 2008, the Home Office sent a point-blank circular to all police forces in the country[8], saying, “As far as these young girls being exploited in towns and cities are concerned, we believe they’ve made an informed choice about their sexual behavior, and therefore it’s not for you police officers to get involved in.”[9] Imagine the cruelty wherein a minor kid is assumed to have made an informed choice about their sexual encounters!

The horror stories of these grooming gangs in the UK are way far more gruesome than the ones that you routinely read on social media, including allegations about how the current UK PM Keir Starmer was instrumental in letting the perpetrators go scot-free and forcing the victims to hide in their own homes. In 2007, Charlene Downes, a 14-year-old girl from Blackpool, was sexually exploited, with her body being disposed of by incorporating it into kebab meat sold at the perp’s establishment.[10] The suffering was no less for the living, though. Rape survivors were forced by the establishment to add the abusers’ names to the birth certificates of the resulting kids so that the perpetrators have parental rights. Imagine a government forcefully exposing a newborn child to a certified set of pedophiles![11]

Scandals like these could have cemented the reputations of media outlets that exposed them thoroughly. Yet, the British media largely chose to turn a blind eye. BBC and Channel 4, for instance, repeatedly aired documentaries focused on a single case in which the victim was later revealed to be lying while ignoring thousands of genuine cases.[12] The question remains: Why does the West go out of its way to patronize deviant Islamist behavior on its soil?

Cost of Ignoring Extremism

Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al-Nahyan of the UAE offered a sharp critique of the West’s perplexing response to Islamist extremism, stating, “There will come a day when we see far more radicals, extremists, and terrorists coming from Europe because of a lack of decision-making and trying to be politically correct.” There, somebody has finally put it in black and white! Political Correctness bordering on the extreme is what emboldens the Islamist network. The perps are fully aware of the West’s squeamishness in calling out Islamic terror as “acknowledging these individuals as threats would mean acknowledging the ideological link between their actions and Islam,” and this is what scares the West, as it might invariably result in being branded as Islamophobic by the Left-liberal troika of intelligentsia, media, and academia.

Instead of addressing the obvious connection, leaders resort to ambiguous platitudes, ultimately yielding more ground to the Islamists than to their victims. Under their dubious DEI initiatives, the Biden administration in the US warned their intelligence personnel against the usage of ‘problematic phrases’ when discussing Islamic terrorism. “Some of the problematic phrases include but are not limited to: ‘Salafi-Jihadist,’ ‘Jihadist,’ ‘Islamic-Extremist,’ ‘Sunni/Shia-Extremism,’ and ‘Radical Islamists.'”[13]

“This wasn’t a simple bureaucratic blunder; it was the result of years of infiltration by Islamic advocacy groups with ties to extremism. The involvement of controversial figures like Shaykh Hamza Yusuf in shaping counterterrorism policy highlights the extent of this infiltration. Yusuf, a man with a documented history of anti-American, antisemitic rhetoric and associations with groups like the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) – a known promoter of jihad – has been invited to influence the US government’s counterterrorism approach. This is the same man who once referred to Judaism as “a most racist religion” and America as “a country that has little to be proud of.” How can a government claim to defend its citizens while taking advice from someone with a track record of praising jihad and condemning the very principles of Western civilization?”[14]

That’s not all. “Documents obtained by Judicial Watch reveal FBI Training Curricula purged of material deemed ‘Offensive’ to Muslims.”[15] Under the Obama administration, FBI Director Robert Mueller met with radical Islamic groups like CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) and ISNA (Islamic Society of North America) and acted according to their whims and fancies. Notably, these organizations have well-documented ties to terrorism; the Hamas-linked CAIR was an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial, the largest terrorism financing case in US history. Indeed, how does one deal with an administration that goes out of its way to appease political Islam and is more committed to preserving political Correctness than the lives of the innocent? Even calls demanding stringent immigration control or policing the criminals get branded as xenophobic or far-right lunacy.

Multiple reasons are believed to be behind this mindless deracination strategy of the Left whenever they are in power. In his book, ‘Manufactured Crisis: The War to End America,’ James Simpson exposes the Left’s ruthless strategy to manufacture crises, weaponize chaos, and systematically dismantle America’s foundations, revealing their ultimate goal: to subjugate a free nation under a socialist regime while exploiting every weakness in the name of justice. “Simpson identified immigration as a key element in the Left’s strategic playbook. He traced this approach back to the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which he described as a transformative piece of legislation that shifted US immigration policy from merit-based entry to a more open-door approach. According to Simpson, the act, partially drafted by members of the California Communist Party, opened the floodgates for mass immigration. This shift was compounded by the 1980 Refugee Act, which broadened the definition of refugee status, making it easier for individuals from politically unstable regions to enter the US.”

Simpson argued that the consequences of these policies are clear. “We now have millions of people pouring across our southern border,” he said, highlighting the strain this influx places on schools, local services, and law enforcement. He also dismissed the claim that illegal immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born citizens, stating, “If we had no illegal immigration, there would be no illegal immigrant crime.”[16]

In the UK, Raja Miah – the whistleblower on the grooming gangs of Oldham, openly declares how grooming gangs of “predominantly Pakistanis and overwhelmingly Muslims” went about raping underage girls from working-class neighborhoods because of the “protection of the Labour Party and the dependency that the Labour Party has on these block votes.” Yes, you read that right… Labour Party leaders and their attendant posse of Liberals – men as well as women – turned a blind eye to the victims just to stay in power! Imagine the travesty of what was once a mighty empire, where a million underage girls were sent to their ruin so that a few despicable politicians could stay in power.[17]

The Road Ahead

 The road ahead of this mess lies in waking up and facing reality, especially for the West. The world can never get a handle on this Islamist extremism unless the Western world comes together and debates over the tenuous connection of this variety of violence with certain debatable tenets of Islam. The elephant in the room needs to be addressed, and no matter how messy and ugly it sounds, somebody will have to take the lead.

Investigative journalist from RAIR, Amy Mek, declares it’s good to be anti-Islam but not anti-Muslim. “Islam is an ideology – a set of ideas. It is not defined by what any individual Muslim wants it to be but by what it inherently is. No ideology is above critique – particularly one that explicitly seeks political and social dominance over everyone. Additionally, ideologies are not entitled to human rights; these rights apply to individuals.”

“Since we do not live in a Muslim country – where censorship, intimidation, and brute force are used to protect Islam from intellectual analysis—we are still somewhat free to openly exercise our right to debate the merits of the Islamic value system against Western Liberalism.”[18]

Countries like the UK must also break free from their long-standing fascination with Pakistan—a challenge for the British establishment, given that the very concept of Pakistan was conceived in their universities and heavily supported by them. It’s worth noting that individuals of Pakistani origin have caused significant damage to British girls. Recently, a Pakistani man attempted to justify his attempt to sexually abuse a child in the UK by citing his religion, claiming that his Prophet married a 9-year-old girl.[19] It is also never lost on a Pakistani that the founder of the country, Jinnah, also wooed and married an underage daughter of his best friend who was not a Muslim.

Reformer Arshia Malik still sees some hope on the horizon, “This mentality won’t change until the basic theological surmise about women being equal to men in dignity is contested. This will mean going into the dangerous areas of scriptures and their publication dates, translations, and misogynist interpretations. Who is bold enough to bell that cat? Certainly not governments… It’s bold individuals from Muslim heritage who are doing it despite the ostracism (worse than death), the toxicity, the network of agenda activists and vulture fact-checkers.”

Yes, this must be done by the reformers within the Muslim society, with enough help, support, and protection from the rest of the world. Legalizing anything externally simply won’t do the job. India, too, tried once in 1985 by going to Court with the Calcutta Quran Petition, which sought official clarification on the 37 sayings which ‘preach cruelty, incite violence and disturb public peace’; 17 sayings which ‘promote, on the ground of religion, feelings of enmity, hatred, and ill-will between different religious communities in India’; and 31 sayings which ‘insult other religions as also the religious beliefs of other communities’. However, the media commotion and sectarian riots that followed ensured that the petition was dismissed and discarded indefinitely.[20]

Ultimately, the most pertinent question is the one Lord Pearson raised in 2018 in the House of Lords regarding grooming gangs: “Can we discuss Islam without being accused of committing a hate crime?”[21]

Citations

[1] Associated Press. 2005. “Ticket agent recalls anger in Atta’s eyes.” NBC News. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/wbna7117783

[2] Fareed, Aisha. 2017. “UAE foreign minister warns Europe over terror threat.” Arab News. https://www.arabnews.com/node/1103086/amp

[3] Al-Ansari, Salman. 2025. “Islamophobia in the UK🇬🇧 doesn’t come from a vacuum.” X/Twitter. https://x.com/Salansar1/status/1876094543830950096

[4] Focus. 2023. “Syrer vergewaltigt 15-Jährige und kommt mit Bewährungsstrafe davon.” FOCUS online. https://www.focus.de/panorama/welt/auf-gutem-weg-normaler-mitbuerger-zu-werden-syrer-vergewaltigt-15-jaehrige-und-kommt-mit-bewaehrung-davon_id_187339753.html

[5] Visegrad24. 2025. “A German judge complimented a Syrian migrant during his trial for raping a 15-y-old girl while she was walking home.” Twitter. https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1875745051298484283

[6] Jackson, James. 2024. “German woman given harsher sentence than rapist for calling him ‘pig.’” The Telegraph. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/06/28/german-woman-given-harsher-sentence-than-rapist-for-calling/

[7] Dionne Miller. 2025. “Gordon Brown and Jacqui Smith should be in Prison!” Twitter/X. https://x.com/NotFarLeftAtAll/status/1875817841917882405

[8] Braithwaite, Mark. 2019. “Nazir Afzal speaks about THAT memo.” YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5GM3fkM_uk

[9] Michael. 2025. “Michael. on X: “…if you think about it, you may not know this, but in 2008, the Home Office sent a circular to all police forces in the country saying, “as far as these young girls being exploited in towns and cities (are concerned), we believe they’ve m.” X. https://x.com/maw6578/status/1874568921891696868

[10] Drishtikone. 2025. “HEARTBREAKING GROOMING STORIES.” Twitter/X. https://x.com/drishtikone/status/1875317815894327395

[11] Sammy. 2025. “Parental rights for Paedophiles…” Twitter/X. https://x.com/hsorg/status/1875962433925501020

[12] ripx4nutmeg. 2025. “The UK mainstream media has broadcast a few documentaries about the rape gangs, which reportedly had 250,000 victims.” Twitter/X. https://x.com/ripx4nutmeg/status/1875847368656167394

[13] Lindquist, Spencer. 2024. “Internal Docs Show Entire Intelligence Community Warned To Avoid ‘Problematic Phrases’ On Islamic Terrorism.” The Daily Wire. https://www.dailywire.com/news/internal-docs-show-entire-intelligence-community-warned-to-avoid-problematic-phrases-on-islamic-terrorism

[14] RAIR. 2025. “New Orleans Jihad Attack: How Government Cowardice and Islamic Whitewashing Endanger America – RAIR.” RAIR Foundation. https://rairfoundation.com/new-orleans-attack-how-government-cowardice-islamic-whitewashing/

[15] Ali, Ayaan H. 2017. “The Challenge of Dawa.” Hoover. https://www.hoover.org/sites/default/files/research/docs/ali_challengeofdawa_final_web.pdf

[16] Mek, Amy. 2025. “’Manufactured Crisis’: James Simpson Exposes the Left’s War to Destroy America (Exclusive Interview) – RAIR.” RAIR Foundation. https://rairfoundation.com/manufactured-crisis-james-simpson-exposes-lefts-war-destroy/

[17] Miah, Raja. 2025. “Raja Miah.” YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOa5Orqqmi0

[18] Mek, Amy. 2024. “It’s Good To Be Anti-Islam… but not anti-Muslim.” Twitter/X. https://x.com/AmyMek/status/1818564012222955690

[19] Rasheed. 2025. “A Pakistani man justified his attempt to sexually abuse a child in England by mentioning that in his religion, his prophet married a 9-year-old girl.” Twitter/X. https://x.com/BrotherRasheed/status/1876093456428478955

[20] HinduPost. 2020. “‘The Calcutta Quran Petition.’” HinduPost. https://hindupost.in/history/the-calcutta-quran-petition-by-sita-ram-goel-chapter-1-a-government-in-panic/

[21] I Meme. 2025. “Can we talk about Islam without being accused of hate crime?” Twitter/X. https://x.com/ImMeme0/status/1875939747706937693