When Ideology Blinds: Why American Progressives Still Can’t Confront Islamist Terror

From 9/11 to the Pulse nightclub massacre to this week’s attacks, denial and identity politics continue to prevent an honest conversation about religious extremism.

I think it’s fair to say that the 9/11 terror attacks shaped the direction of my adult life. I’m not American, but in the aftermath of the deadliest terror attack on US soil, I was looking for answers. And I found them in the works of Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. In short, terrible religious ideas are not just believed—they are believed sincerely enough that some people will kill for them. This is a fact much of the secular West seems incapable of understanding.

Although America would continue to bump into the spectre of Islamic fascism in the intervening years, it was still easy enough for most Americans to go about their lives completely untouched by the problem.

I’m from a small island called the UK however and the issue of Islamic extremism is far more pronounced and harder to ignore (though many somehow still manage it). It's difficult to think of a single area of the country that doesn't have first-hand experience of the problem, be it successful and foiled terror attacks, grooming gangs, sectarian politics and Islamic “blasphemy” controversies. Ditto for much of Europe.

Yet when I decided to turn my attention to the dangers of Islam in my reporting, the accusations of “racism”, “far-right” and the occasional screech of “Nazi” came thick and fast—most notably from my American cousins.

Well, fast forward to March 2026 and America has been the target of three separate Islamic terror attacks in less than 7 days. We've seen two people charged with terror offences for lobbing explosives at protestors in New York whilst shouting “Allahu akbar”. Another man also shouting “Allahu Akbar” opened fire at a Virginia university, killing one person and injuring others. And in news that is still unfolding, a man named Ayman Mohamad Ghazali has just been killed attempting to ram a Michigan synagogue with a car full of explosives.

Naturally, when religiously motivated acts of terrorism occur three times in less than a week, you may expect that American atheist, secular and humanist organisations say something useful about it. But unfortunately, said organisations and activists have been completely captured by far-left identity politics and derangement surrounding trans issues. As I've reported here and here. They appear to have had nothing to say about a flood of religiously motivated terrorism playing out on American streets and institutions.

You may recall that in June 2016 the deadliest terror-related mass shooting in U.S. history was carried out by a jihadist named Omar Mateen. He murdered 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Florida shortly after pledging allegiance to the Islamic State. It is widely believed he chose the venue because it was a popular LGBTQ nightclub.

Several years after this unthinkable crime I was on stage in New Jersey speaking on a panel titled ‘The Great Migration: A Discussion on Digital and Physical Immigration’. During the discussion, myself and two other panelists did our best to explain the unique dangers posed by Islam in the direction of the two leftie progressives sat beside us.

No matter what data points and statistics were provided, the two aforementioned leftists could not accept (nor comprehend) that Islam posed a unique threat to gay rights. The reflexive response amounted to variations of “but what about the Trump Administration and conservative Christians?”. But it’s what happened next that is something I've found impossible to forget.

One panelist, author Tara Devlin, was growing increasingly frustrated with all the Islam bashing and decided to try and shift focus away from the “Islam is bad for the gays” sentiment that was taking hold.

“I mean, have we heard of the Pulse Nightclub? Was that a Muslim?” she asks smugly, gesticulating towards the audience, imagining she's found a beautiful gotcha highlighting the real threat. “Yes. Yes it was a Muslim” came the response.

“That was a Muslim?!” Devlin exclaims, incredulous, seemingly discovering this fact for the first time years after the attack. She reaches for her phone to double-check—but the verification is short-lived. The other far-left panelist quickly pivots the conversation to a familiar diversion: “What about Trump?” Devlin blurts, “Exactly!”—and just like that, the discussion glides past the Jihadist slaughter of nearly fifty people in an American gay bar.

You can watch a clip of this moment below:

I've always considered this moment to be perfectly emblematic of the complete uselessness of American progressives on one of the biggest problems of our time. Too busy virtue-signalling over imagined fascism to even begin to learn about the very real manifestations of it.