Islamists Exploit Western Progressives’ Hand-wringing to Support Their Own

Coinciding with the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, an increasing number of commentators and activists have embraced the questionable claim that the threat posed by Islamism for the past few decades has been supplanted by a far-right menace, or even that the Islamist threat was heavily exaggerated from the start.

It is amid such casuistry that Islamists and their foreign state sponsors have spotted an opportunity to plead the case for their most violent progeny. Radicals are reframing dangerous jihadists convicted in the two decades following 9/11 as innocent victims of an overzealous, “structurally racist,” and paranoid American security state. The greatest victim of the security state’s cruelty, Islamists claim, is Aafia Siddiqui — otherwise known as Lady Al-Qaeda.