@layman,
Which I why I wrote it "may" be unfair.
I'm certainly not going to go so far as to suggest he is sympathetic to the goals of terrorists, but it does seem that he is bending over backwards to attempt to mitigate, in any way possible, the horror of their deeds.
This is de rigueur behavior for a certain segment of progressives.
It is what is behind the Attorney General of the United States telling the nation that she is more concerned about a backlash against Muslim Americans than attacks against Americans by Muslims (American or otherwise).
I imagine that they are operating from the foundational premise that Americans, by and large, are a very nasty bunch and are inclined to persecute anyone who isn't White and/or Christian. They feel compelled therefore to immediately defend Muslims, first as a group and then individually, whenever one of these attacks occurs. It's as if they are frustrated public defenders.
Immediately after an attack there is a concerted effort to avoid any speculation what-so-ever that a Muslim may be involved. This wouldn't be too unreasonable if it wasn't so often the case that speculation about "right-wing extremists" isn't so judiciously avoided.
Once the attacker(s) is identified as a Muslim, the possibilities of a non-religious motivation are floated and then often insisted upon:
Work place violence, just a crazy loon. Even when the attacker is shouting praises to Allah as he guns people down, the insistence that religion isn't involved doesn't waver. If evidence shows up that the person was interested in Jihadi websites and posted extremist Islamic rhetoric on a FB page, it's not conclusive evidence of a religious motivation:
"Well, yes the person may have had Islamist sympathies, but that doesn't mean that's why she drove down 40 people on the Vegas strip while shouting "Allahu Akbar!"
To be fair this is as far as most of these folks will go. Eventually the proof that the person was a jihadi is overwhelming and they give up on the alternate motivations. Of course they then immediately transition to the straw man of "Not all Muslims are terrorists," and "We can't allow a horrendous backlash against Muslims to occur."
Some, however, take it further and try to actually make excuses for the violence:
"Charlie Hebdo asked for it!"; "What do you expect when we are using drones that kill entire wedding parties!"; "George Bush brought this on us!"
I'm not sure how far PP has gone along this spectrum, but his comments in other threads indicate he is someone I would describe as a "bleeding heart." Now, this isn't intended to be as offensive as it may seem. I think people who allow sentiment to override reason can be foolish, but not necessarily harmful. In some cases it's more sanctimony than sentiment, but, in this case I can't say.
I may be being thick here (it's been known to happen) but it's been tough to pin him down on what his motivation is for so diligently defending these individuals. Obviously I've posed these questions to him as you are responding to a post I directed towards him and I invite not only his answers to those questions, but his comments on anything I've written here.
I don't mean to make this specific to PP, because for me he is more representative of a segment of Americans than a individual actor, but I appreciate that distinction may be entirely lost on him or deemed completely irrelevant.
