"Some of my best friends are Muslims..."

Eric Metaxas (I've written about him before), in his 2-part interview with Robert Spencer about his new book, didn't exactly repeat that old cliché, but he might as well have.  Right at the top of his Part 2 of his interview with Spencer, he asks Spencer the good question, why, 17 years after 911, are Americans still so clueless about the problem of Islam? (He could have expanded this to ask why the majority of Westerners in general seem to be clueless about the problem of Islam.)

 In his answer, Spencer avoids the cultural problem of what I have called Politically Correct Multiculturalism (PC MC), but that's beside the point I'm raising here.  At the end of his brief answer, Spencer concludes with the frustrating fact that still in our time throughout the West:

"Those who think that there is a problem of terrorism within Islam are [branded as] racists and bigots and Islamophobes."

To which Eric quipped:

"Like you and me."

Spencer laughed, then Eric had that anxious spasm we've seen or heard so often over the years, even among those who are more or less "in the counter-jihad" (Eric seems to have one foot in, one foot out) which I have called "double-virtue-signalling":

"It's so fascinating because -- look, I have had friends that are Muslims who are nothing like this..."

Prompting the question, "nothing like what, exactly...?" And the deadly follow-up question: "How do you know they are 'nothing like this', eh Eric...?"

Spencer, naturally, let it slide.