On Tuesday, Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-KS) called on imams to disavow terrorism.
MIKE POMPEO: There have been at least a dozen attacks by Muslim terrorists on U.S. soil since Ramzi Yousef's parked rental van exploded in the basement of the World Trade Center on February 26, 1993. Some have caused death and injury—such as the 9/11 attacks, Nidal Hasan's mass shooting at Fort Hood, Texas in 2009, and the Boston Marathon bombings. Other attacks—such as Faisal Shahzad's fizzled Times Square bombing or Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's unsuccessful underwear bombing of a flight—were thwarted or aborted.
Yet fatal or not, all of these attacks were successful in scaring Americans. Successful at reducing freedom in the most freedom-loving nation on earth. Successful in slowing our economy. And successful in demonstrating that our open society is vulnerable. They were, in former Attorney General Michael Mukasey's words "crimes that are nonetheless meant to send a terrorist message."
When the most devastating terrorist attacks on America in the last 20 years come overwhelmingly from people of a single faith, and are performed in the name of that faith, a special obligation falls on that faith's leaders to respond.
Instead, their silence has made most Islamic leaders across America complicit in these acts.