Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson excused one of the leaders of the extremist Oath Keepers organization implicated in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection by describing him as "a devout Christian." It's safe to surmise that he wouldn't have offered a similar defense for a Muslim American. Since Sept. 11, 2001, and even before that ominous date, they have suffered bitterly from discrimination and hate crimes in this country, while their religion has been demonized. During the first year of the Trump administration, about half of Muslim Americans polled said that they had personally experienced some type of discrimination.
No matter that this group resides comfortably in the American mainstream, it remains under intensive, often unconstitutional, surveillance. In contrast, during the past two decades, the Department of Justice for the most part gave a pass to violent white supremacists. No matter that they generated more terrorist attacks on U.S. soil than any other group. The benign insouciance of the white American elite toward such dangerous fanatics also allowed them to organize freely for the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol and the potential violent overthrow of the government.
