Check Under The Hood

The narrative after 9/11 largely remains that Americans have given in to illegitimate "fear and mistrust" of Muslims in general.

A saner approach would be to acknowledge that there is a small minority of Muslims who channel generic Islamist fantasies, so that we can assume that either formal terrorist plots or individual acts of murder will more or less occur here every three to six months.

At some point, if organized plots (see the most recent in Boston) and isolated acts of lone gunmen and homicidal drivers continue, and if the prevailing theme continues to be fears of American intolerance and unfairness to Muslims after 9/11, the public will resent the disconnect between what they are told to think and what they believe, on the basis of the overwhelming evidence.