MARCH 27, 2016 8:48 AM BY ROBERT SPENCER

Obama’s timing is grotesque. After the Brussels jihad massacre, he should be talking about how he is ramping up our resistance to jihad terror, not about how we have to stop picking on the poor Muslims in America, whom no one is picking on in the first place.

“We have to reject any attempt to stigmatize Muslim-Americans,” i.e., we are not going to speak honestly about the motivating ideology of jihad terror, no matter how high the bodies pile up.

“…and their enormous contributions to our country and our way of life.” Yes, look at all the enormous contributions Muslims have made to our country and our way of life. Muslims remodeled the New York skyline. Muslims brought about the transformation of government buildings in Washington, D.C. and elsewhere into veritable fortresses, each with massive stone blocks outside to prevent jihadis from using truck bombs. Muslims provided the impetus for huge advances — and huge expenses — in the development of technology used to screen passengers in airports. Muslims are responsible for air travel being transformed from a glamorous, adventurous activity to a cramped, hectoring, inhospitable affair, with glum, shoeless hordes holding up their beltless trousers while being herded through intrusive and inefficient checkpoints. We also owe Muslims for insisting upon the political correctness that requires everyone to be humiliated equally. Passengers are poked, prodded, threatened, and treated as likely criminals while America is hamstrung from efficiently focusing on the true source of the problem.

We also must credit Muslims with increases in the U.S. government. It is now bigger, wealthier (on your tax money), and watching you more closely than it was on September 10, 2001. Muslims can take a bow for the creation of at least two government agencies — the TSA and the Department of Homeland Security — plus a massive expansion in the budgets of all manner of intelligence and law enforcement entities. Those bloated budgets are one manifestation of what is actually the greatest contribution that Muslims have made to our nation: the slow destruction of the American economy. Osama bin Laden explained that he mounted the 9/11 jihad terror attacks in order to weaken the American economy; in October 2004 he rejoiced at how he had induced the Americans to spend, spend, spend to try to stymie him: “Al-Qaeda spent $500,000 on the event, while America, in the incident and its aftermath, lost — according to the lowest estimate — more than $500 billion, meaning that every dollar of al-Qaeda defeated a million dollars.”

And that was in 2004. How many more billions have been spent since then, even aside from the billions wasted on the nation-building misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan? If Osama were alive today, he could look with satisfaction on an America that is poorer, uglier, meaner, more dangerous, less productive, and less efficient than it was on September 10, 2001.

Such an enormous contribution Muslims have made to our country!

“Obama: Stigmatizing Muslims ‘plays into hands’ of jihadists,” AFP, March 26, 2016:

Washington (AFP) – President Barack Obama has urged Americans not to stigmatize Muslims following this week’s deadly attacks in Brussels, saying that doing so is “counterproductive” in the fight against radical Islam.

In his weekly media address, Obama said Muslim-Americans are “our most important partners in the nation’s fight against those who would wage violent jihad.

“That’s why we have to reject any attempt to stigmatize Muslim-Americans, and their enormous contributions to our country and our way of life,” Obama said.

“Such attempts are contrary to our character, to our values, and to our history as a nation built around the idea of religious freedom. It’s also counterproductive,” he said.

“It plays right into the hands of terrorists who want to turn us against one another — who need a reason to recruit more people to their hateful cause.”

Obama made his remarks as the global community continues to reel from Tuesday’s attacks in Belgium, claimed by the Islamic State group, which killed 31 dead, including two Americans, and wounded 300….