Mark Steyn on the ‘Muslim’ vs. ‘mentally ill’ trope of our times

Mark Steyn writes:

In fact, there’s less hard evidence for any mental illness than there is for “radicalization”, at least to the extent that Brinsley appears to have posted on his Facebook page the Koranic soundbite about “striking fear into the enemies of Allah”. Nevertheless, the preferred explanation is that Brinsley was mentally ill, just like the guy who beheaded a coworker in Oklahoma was mentally ill, and the Sydney bloke who took those hostages at the coffee shop was mentally ill, and the son of the Canadian Refugee Board honcho who killed a soldier at the Canadian War Memorial was mentally ill. They were also all Muslim. Oh, and the fellow in France who ran down 11 people with his car while shouting “Allahu Akbar!” only yesterday has already been pronounced mentally ill. By sheer coincidence, he was Muslim, too.

Is this one of those parlor games – like “Dead or Canadian?” Or “Gay or European?” Don’t forget, if you’re playing in the western media’s daily Nothing-to-See-Here quiz, in the “Crazy or Muslim?” round the correct answer is “Crazy”, every time.

These are not mutually incompatible categories: There are dead Canadians, and gay Europeans, and crazy Muslims. To get people to march in the streets shouting “What do we want? Dead cops! When do we want them? Now!” is relatively easy. To persuade Al Sharpton’s swaggering halfwit goons to act on their slogans is another matter. A person has to be suggestible, and there’s an accumulation of evidence that in today’s world disaffected young Muslim men are the most easily suggestible of all. Whether they’re suggestible because they’re Muslim or they’re Muslim because they’re suggestible is one of those chicken-or-egg conundrums.

We heard Michael Coren speak last night at the JDL Canada Chanuhah “do.” He recalled the bad old days when the IRA were much in the news.

“No one ever described these individuals as ‘mentally ill’ after they killed someone,” Coren recalled wryly. “We called them ‘IRA members.”