Far-Right Danger After Brussels, far-right Islamophobes are doing exactly what ISIS wants them to do: threatening the “gray zone” - by Ben Norton

ISIS took credit for a horrific series of bombings in Brussels, Beligum on Monday which killed at least 30 people.

Even before the extremist group claimed responsibility, anti-Muslim sentiment exploded. The hashtag #StopIslam was trending globally on Twitter.

Far-right politicians peddled Islamophobic rancor and tapped into xenophobic bigotry, exploiting the tragedy as a political opportunity. Republican frontrunner Donald Trump reaffirmed his support for torture and called for closing up the U.S.’s borders. Fellow GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz likewise maintained that police should even more aggressively “patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods.”

As has become painfully customary, the double standards in the discussion of the attacks were immediately apparent. When white right-wing extremists massacre people at a women’s health clinic, bomb a federal government building in Oklahoma City or fly a plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas, white right-wingers are not immediately blamed. But when Islamic extremists kill people, not only are the world’s 1.7 billion Muslims collectively blamed, their 1,500-year-old religion is too.

What is even more insidious — and dangerous — about this predictable anti-Muslim, racist, xenophobic response, however, is not just how hateful and destructive it is. The fact of the matter is that Islamophobes are directly playing into ISIS’ hands.

Read more: After Brussels, far-right Islamophobes are doing exactly what ISIS wants them to do: threatening the “gray zone” - Salon.com