Patrol Muslim No-Cooperation Zones Here at Home Too

 

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Salah Abdeslam, the fugitive wanted in the Paris terrorist attacks and nabbed last week, had been hiding in plain sight in the neighborhood where he grew up. Yet nobody turned him in. (AP)

Jihad: GOP presidential hopeful Ted Cruz is taking a lot of heat for calling on law enforcement to “patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized” by ISIS. But there is no good argument against such a plan.

Yes, we’ve heard the claims that closer surveillance would alienate a community that is “our first line of defense against terrorist attacks.”

But with each new terrorism case linking back to safe houses and mosques inside the Muslim community, such rhetoric increasingly rings hollow.

ISIS recruits aren’t operating in Mormon or Amish neighborhoods. They’re secreted in Islamic enclaves. And police are getting little help ferreting them out.

In Belgium, police asked Muslims for assistance finding suspects involved in the airport bombings and instead were jeered. In fact, throngs of Middle Eastern men surrounded cops knocking on doors in one Muslim neighborhood and mocked them with “hoots and chicken noises.”

Last week, in another Muslim district, dozens of men attacked police with rocks and bottles as they arrested a terrorist suspect wanted in last year’s Paris attacks.

The fugitive, Salah Abdeslam, had been hiding in plain sight just a few doors down from his family home. For four months, one of the world’s most wanted terrorists lived in the neighborhood where he grew up. Yet nobody turned him in.

We’re told that our Muslims are more patriotic and wouldn’t hesitate to give up a jihadist in their midst. But San Bernardino casts doubt on those assumptions.

Local construction workers saw several Middle Eastern men filing in and out of the bomb factory ISIS-tied Syed Farook and his wife set up in their townhouse. His mother lived with them there.

His Muslim convert pal, Enrique Marquez, helped build the bombs, and once bragged to a co-worker after attending mosque: “There’s so many sleeper cells, so many people just waiting.”

“A lot of people in the community knew they were going to do it because in their apartment, they had bombs all over the floor, and they didn’t report them,” GOP front-runner Donald Trump said. “It’s like they’re protecting each other.”

It certainly looks suspicious.

Belgian authorities say they discovered the bomb factory used to make the explosives within hours of Tuesday’s attacks. Too bad they didn’t find that safe house before the bombs were used to kill 31 innocent people.

The police need to be in these neighborhoods all the time, and they’re not.

We have to take off the PC handcuffs, stop fighting a war of reaction and start taking action where it counts — in the Muslim community — before ISIS hits us like it did Belgium and Paris.