ISIS's Iran Attacks Debunk the Mainstream Media's Explanation of Islamic Terrorism

It’s taken as a given among the commentariat that Islamic terrorists commit their atrocities in order to “sweep away” the West’s commitment to the “inclusiveness of diverse societies,” as the New York Times put it after the Manchester Arena bombing in England last month. As long as Europe and the U.S. preserve maximum multiculturalism, the “terrorists will have failed,” the Washington Post editorialized after that same attack. Conversely, according to this logic, Islamic terrorists will win if a country reevaluates its open-borders policy.

Why, then, did ISIS hit Iran’s parliament complex and its shrine to Ayatollah Khomeini on Wednesday? Why is it targeting Syria and other countries in North Africa? None of these places is notable for multiculturalism or open borders. Perhaps it’s because ISIS’s goals are more straightforward: to kill as many infidels as possible and to usher in the Caliphate. The liberal story-line that radical Islam is obsessed with Western “inclusiveness” and that it pays close attention to changes in immigration policy is simply narcissistic.

This piece originally appeared on National Review Online

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Heather Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith fellow at the Manhattan Institute, contributing editor at City Journal, and the author of The War on Cops.

This piece originally appeared in National Review Online