Within hours of the terrorist attack in Orlando, President Obama, members of his administration and media pundits joined with representatives of the Council on American Islamic Relations, the Islamic Society of North America, and spokesmen from the local Islamic community to decry the “lone wolf” attack.

They came together for reasons ranging from ignorance to perfidy. There is no such thing as a “lone wolf” jihadist.

The homegrown threat is real, but the notion that a lone Muslim can use the internet to self-radicalize, plan and then carry out a jihadist attack, all by himself, is false. The Islamic “lone wolf” is a myth. Every terrorist attack, from 9/11 to San Bernardino was conducted by a group of Muslims.

A 2007 New York Police Department study, “Radicalization in the West: The Homegrown Threat,” found that, “Living within and as part of a diaspora provides an increased sense of isolation and a desire to bond with others of the same culture and religion. Within diaspora Muslim communities in the West, there is a certain tolerance for the existence of the extremist subculture that enables radicalization. For the individual, radicalization generally takes place in an atmosphere where others are being radicalized as well.” Again, there is no such thing as a “lone wolf” jihadist.

President Obama desperately wants the Orlando massacre to be the act of a lone wolf. For seven and a half years, Obama has downplayed the homegrown threat potential and denied the existence of a network of radical, Islamic extremists and organizations, largely affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, within the United States.

From the time he first took office, President Obama has treated the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, as well as their front groups in the United States, as moderate Muslims. They are not.

In a 2007 thesis titled “To Our Great Detriment: Ignoring What Extremists Say About Jihad,” a U.S. Army intelligence officer, Major Stephen Collins Coughlin, writes, “The Muslim Brotherhood is an Islamic group formed in Egypt in 1928 by Hasan al-Banna that can make reasonable claims to being the progenitor of the “extremist” Islamic movement of the modern era.”

President Obama has consistently ignored military and law-enforcement warnings. He met with Muslim Brotherhood representatives in the White House while turning a blind eye to their connections with jihadist activity.

Department of Homeland Security whistle blower Philip Haney says he was told, in 2009 and again in 2012, to purge DHS records of the Muslim Brotherhood network of terror-connected individuals and organizations. On June 15, he said the mosque that the San Bernardino jihadists attended and the mosque that the Orlando jihadist attended are both associated with that network. He claimed both attacks might have been prevented had the purge not occurred.

While the dead still lay in pools of blood in the Orlando nightclub, a CAIR representative and a spokesman for the Islamic Society of North America held a joint news conference. Instead of their usual warnings against bigotry and Islamophobia, the CAIR representative took a new approach. He strenuously declared that the shooter was an outlaw (and gave the Arabic term). The dead jihadist was not a real Muslim and therefore his actions could not represent Islam. The ISNA spokesman read a carefully worded statement that stopped short of actually saying anything.

One local leader of the Muslim community was asked, three times, if the shooter had been a devout worshipper at the mosque. Each time the wide-eyed Muslim leader declared, “No Muslim, Christian or Jew would do such a thing!” Each answer was louder than the one before, substituting volume for sincerity.

As the FBI investigation plays out over the ensuing weeks and months, we will learn more about the family and friends who were aware of the jihadist’s plans and more about those who assisted him. The jihadist will be associated with a radical mosque and radical imams. He has already been associated with a suicide bomber. It should not be a surprise if it turns out that he made multiple trips recently to the Middle East.

Sadly, more than 14 years after 9/11, we are still faced with a media that, with few exceptions, knows nothing about Islam. They will blather on about gun control or the nuances of a homosexual Muslim lifestyle. Their ignorance means an uninformed population.

The president will not now admit his folly during the waning months of his presidency, so I will. There is no such thing as a “lone wolf” jihadist!

Snyder is a resident of Kalispell.