[Image shows map of where ISIS fighters are coming from.  Source: Radio Free Europe.]

In the wake of the attack in Brussels, a hashtag called #StopIslam began trending.  You might think that is no surprise, since radical Muslims had carried out yet another massacre in a major Western city.  You might, however, regret the impulse to blame all Muslims for the acts of a few.  You might even wish to shame your fellows for not being as open-minded (and politically correct) as you are yourself.

If you are this person, you are the whole reason that #StopIslam was trending.  90% of the traffic associated with that hashtag was people shaming others for using it.

This is not the first time that this has happened.

The spread of #StopIslam mirrors a similar phenomenon that happened after the November 13 attacks in Paris, according to computational researchers. After the Paris attack… [r]esearchers from the University of Washington and Qatar Computing Research Institute pored over more than 8 million tweets associated to the Paris attacks, analyzing the sentiment behind the social conversation. “Our findings show that the majority of the tweets were in fact defending Muslims and absolving them from responsibility for the attacks,” the report says.

Let us be confident, as a people, that we are aware of the dangers of racism and prejudice.  We are principled in being dead-set against those things — so much so that 90% of our reaction to seeing our fellows murdered, again, is aimed at guarding our community against falling into prejudice.

Now that we’ve solved that problem, can we talk about the other problem? 

Belgian intelligence has long been short of funds and personnel and above all any political will to do anything substantive about the country’s vast jihadist problem. Belgium’s chronically dysfunctional politics have played a toxic role, as has the general Western European tendency to avert eyes and hope for the best regarding the growing radicalism of whole swathes of young people in the Muslim ghettos that exist in most of their cities now.

A few are beginning to stop averting their eyes, and this is good.  We have to have a serious conversation about the effect of mass Islamic immigration.  We have to be able to talk about the problem of enclave neighborhoods that police and intelligence cannot penetrate, and how we can deal with the reality that lots of them now exist.

For too long our national conversations have painted any of these concerns as expressions of racism.  We have told ourselves that anyone who voices these concerns must be driven out of polite discourse.  The effect has been sweeping electoral gains by political parties willing to entertain radical thought.

Does anyone really think that transferring power to more extreme political actors is going to help Muslims in Europe or America?  Does anyone still believe that the problem will just go away if we avert our eyes?

If not, then it is time to stop pretending that these concerns are illegitimate expressions of prejudice.  It is time to start admitting these discussions back into ordinary politics.  Every Westerner needs to admit that the crisis is real and immediate.  Every Westerner needs to think and talk about what the solutions might be.