There is a temptation in moments of fear and anger to reach for the bluntest possible instrument: collective blame.

We are seeing it again now, in calls from some politicians and commentators to treat Muslim Americans not as individuals, but “as a class.” It is offensive. It is wrong. And it is profoundly un-American.

We have been here before.

American history offers a warning that should never be forgotten: General Ulysses S. Grant’s order expelling Jews “as a class” from parts of the South during the Civil War. It was born of frustration, prejudice, and expedience. It is remembered today as a stain.

That is what collective guilt produces. Not security. Not clarity. Just injustice.

And it obscures the truth.

Because the truth is more important: not all Muslims are jihadists. The overwhelming majority are not. But there exists, within every society, a subset animated by radical, supremacist ideology. In this case, that subset is jihadists and they are a very real problem.

We have seen synagogues attacked, Jewish schools targeted, and civilians murdered around the world – from New York to Paris, from Sydney to Jerusalem. These acts are not isolated. They are the violent edge of a broader ideological ecosystem that glorifies terror, sanctifies hatred, and seeks legitimacy in the West.

That ecosystem is not confined to foreign battlefields. It has nodes here.

Organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Within Our Lifetime do not operate as neutral advocacy groups. Their rhetoric, tactics, and alliances echo the narratives of jihadist movements – erasing terrorism, justifying atrocities, and turning mass violence against Jews into something to be rationalized and celebrated.

This is where scrutiny belongs.

Not on millions of Muslim Americans living ordinary lives who are part of the American fabric. But on the networks, organizations, and ideologies that radicalize, that excuse violence, and that deliberately blur the moral line between protest and terror.

Failing to make that distinction is not only unjust but dangerous.

When everything is labeled the problem, nothing is. When all Muslims are treated as suspects, actual jihadists disappear into the noise. They benefit from that confusion. They rely on it.

And worse, it hands them a propaganda victory: proof, in their telling, that the West is inherently hostile, that coexistence is impossible, that radicalism is justified.

That is why calls to expel Muslims from the United States are not just racist; they are strategically self-defeating. They punish the innocent, betray American principles, and distract from the real threat.

A serious society does not fight ideologies with hysteria. It fights them with precision.

It identifies the threat clearly: jihadist ideology, its enablers, and the institutions that normalize or legitimize it. It protects the innocent. And it refuses, no matter how charged the moment, to abandon the principles that distinguish a free society from the movements that seek to destroy it.