In this morning's lead article at FrontPage, I discuss the Salt Lake shootings (news links in the original):
When Sulejmen Talovic entered the Trolley Square mall in Salt Lake City Monday night with a shotgun, a pistol, and a backpack full of ammunition, he intended to “kill a large number of people,” according to Salt Lake City Police Chief Chris Burbank. Talovic killed five people and wounded four before he himself was killed by an off-duty Ogden police officer who happened to be in the mall.Why did Talovic do it? No one knows. Talovic’s aunt, Ajka Omerovic, told reporters: “We want to know what happened, just like you guys. We have no idea...We know him as a good boy. He liked everybody, so I don’t know what happened.” Talovic, who was eighteen at the time of the murders, was a Bosnian Muslim who came to the United States with his family in 1998. Could he have been motivated by jihadist sympathies?
FBI special agent Patrick Kiernan discounted that possibility. “We’re working closely with the Salt Lake P.D. and we’re obviously aware that that [terrorism] is a potential issue out there,” he explained. “But at this point there is nothing that is leading us down this road.” And with Talovic dead and apparently having acted alone, unless something he wrote explaining his actions is discovered, it is unlikely that his motive will ever be definitively known.
But was Kiernan really correct that “there is nothing that is leading us down this road”? Unfortunately, he didn’t explain how he came to this conclusion. Talovic joins an unfortunately growing list of Muslims who have committed random acts of violence, only for officials to assure us that their actions have nothing to do with terrorism. Maybe none of them do, but the list is full of troubling details:
* On January 31, Ismail Yassin Mohamed, 22, stole a car in Minneapolis. He went on a rampage, ramming the stolen car into other cars and then stealing a van and continuing to ram other cars, injuring one person. His father told officials that Mohamed was suffering from mental problems; his mother added he had been depressed and hadn’t been taking his medication. During his rampage, Mohamed repeatedly yelled, “Die, die, die, kill, kill, kill,” and when asked why he did all this, he replied, “Allah made me do it.”* Omeed Aziz Popal, a Muslim from Afghanistan, who killed one person and injured fourteen during a murderous drive through San Francisco city streets in August 2006, during which he targeted people on crosswalks and sidewalks, identified himself as a terrorist after his rampage, according to Rob Roth of San Francisco’s KTVU. Later the murders were ascribed to Popal’s mental problems, and to stress arising from his impending arranged marriage.
* On July 28, 2006, a Muslim named Naveed Afzal Haq forced his way into the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle. Once inside, Haq announced, “I’m a Muslim American; I’m angry at Israel,” and then began shooting, killing one woman and injuring five more. FBI assistant special agent David Gomez stated: “We believe...it’s a lone individual acting out his antagonism. There’s nothing to indicate that it’s terrorism-related. But we're monitoring the entire situation.”
* In March 2006, a twenty-two-year-old Iranian student named Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar drove an SUV onto the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, deliberately trying to kill people and succeeding in injuring nine. After the incident, he seemed singularly pleased with himself, smiling and waving to crowds after a court appearance on Monday, at which he explained that he was “thankful for the opportunity to spread the will of Allah.” Officials here again dismissed the possibility of terrorism, even after Taheri-azar wrote a series of letters to the UNC campus newspaper detailing the Qur’anic justification for warfare against unbelievers, and explaining why he believed his attacks were justified from an Islamic perspective.
None of these were terrorist attacks in the sense that they were planned and executed by al-Qaeda agents. And it is possible that all of them were products of nothing more ideologically significant than a disturbed mental state, although it is at least noteworthy that each attacker explained his actions in terms of Islamic terrorism. As such attacks grow in number, it would behoove authorities at very least to consider the possibility that these attacks were inspired by the jihadist ideology of Islamic supremacism, and to step up pressure on American Muslim advocacy groups to renounce that ideology definitively and begin extensive programs to teach against it in American Islamic schools and mosques.
In October 2006, a pro-jihad internet site published a “Guide for Individual Jihad,” explaining to jihadists “how to fight alone.” It recommended, among other things, assassination with guns and running people over. Is it possible that Sulejmen Talovic and some of these others were waging this jihad of one? It is indeed, but with law enforcement officials trained only to look for signs of membership in al-Qaeda or other jihad groups, and to discount terrorism as a factor if those signs aren’t there, it is a possibility that investigators will continue to overlook.
The Press lies, the FBI lies, the Salt lake Police too. Maybe one day the truth will be told by our Goverment, but I doubt it. You watch this next election for president, the dems will try to disarm Americans too.
It might be that some people have adopted the concept of "Leaderless Resistance" in the US.
No command structure to capture or kill. No logistical structure to disrupt. No way for the FBI to infiltrate informants. Just have ideological advocates promote the idea of hitting at the US (while themselves maintaining clean hands and providing no excuse for anybody to arrest them), and cultivating people who will decide on their own what form of attack they will conduct.
Meanwhile, the terrorists hide among their close-mouthed friends, acting like needles in haystacks
who is responsible for keeping the truth out of media to quell panic?
the State Department? self-censorship rules? Rupert? CAIR intimidated editors?
to preserve the American way of life, carefree and fanciful, it is essential that we passively watch as these types of attacks increase, right?
what would be the psychological result if the press took all the attacks on our soil and blasted them in the headlines?
The default practise of failed male islamics is jihadi suicide killer.
Punt islam out of the West. It is a cancer which must be rejected.
"Talovic joins an unfortunately growing list of Muslims who have committed random acts of violence
Maybe he was motivated by his religion, or maybe he was just another hate-filled teen reject like all the others who have committed such crimes before him, most of whom were not Muslim. It's a little early to be jumping to conclusions.
The terrorists Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph were both raised Christian. Obviously, Christians are a severe terrorist threat and they should all be deported immediately (at least by the faulty reasoning shown in many of the comments above).
"It's clear that merely having Muslims in our countries is a danger as they are waling TIME BOMBS, ready to explode into spontaneous jihad ANY TIME."
Fanatics of all stripes (Muslim, Christian, Democrat, Republican, or otherwise) are dangerous walking time bombs. The sooner people abandon their ridiculous superstitious/ideological delusions, the better off we'll all be. One of those delusions, by the way, is the assumption that everyone of a particular religion, race, or nationality is a terrorist bogeyman.
JihadWatch could have been a very useful and important resource for illuminating the dangers of Islamic extremism. It's a shame that Robert Spencer has allowed it to degenerate into a McCarthy-esque source of paranoia and fear-mongering against all Muslims.
Equivalence arguments, at this time in the struggle, and given the inexorable evidence, becomes only the fool or the novice.
At a certain point, even the fool or the novice will wake up.
Mattbert wrote:
"The terrorists Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph were both raised Christian. Obviously, Christians are a severe terrorist threat and they should all be deported immediately."
They were a glaring exception to the rule. Hell, even Robert alerted to the use of them as examples to obfuscate the reality of Islam in his P.I.G.
Attacking Robert for responses by others on this site is faulty, at best.
mattbert wrote:
"JihadWatch could have been a very useful and important resource for illuminating the dangers of Islamic extremism."
Not "could have", it is. Please state your opinion on what other site has and does a better job of it. I've been waiting for Brian Williams to contribute anything of value to the subject for quite some time now.
mattbert wrote:
"It's a shame that Robert Spencer has allowed it to degenerate into a McCarthy-esque source of paranoia and fear-mongering against all Muslims."
Nice liberal use of PC terms there. An example of McCarthy-esqueism by Robert would help to support your blanket condemnation of him. Just one, for kicks.
Time for you to turn off American Idol. Go read a book or two or something, you leftist twit.
Mattbert,
The Timothy McVeigh comparison is so ludicrous it isn't worth commenting on.
This morning my channel 7 news in Boise Idaho reported that the victim in this whole situation is Sulejmen Talovic. They went on to show pictures of his war torn village, no mention of the true victims, their families, that this boy shot a pregnant women. No only that we should feel sorry for him.
Those who mention Mc Veigh on my blog are immediately deleted.
When it comes to the authorities, they deny the jihad even when a guy has 'Al Quaeda tattoed on his forehed.
The MSM sux. Totally. All Power to the bloggers!
http://sheikyermami.com/2007/02/15/utah-bleeding-hearts-go-out-to-the-muslims-of-course/
Hey Mattbert,
You are obviously an intelligent and articulate person. Why do you parrot the old "Tim McVeigh was raised Christian" argument which is both false and fatuous?
First, Tim McVeigh was not "Christian" in any sense of the word. He specifically and publically denied being a Christian after his arrest. You can Google it.
Second, even if McVeigh was a Christian, your reasoning fails to make a critical distinction. Jihadists by definition are self-proclaimed martyrs of Allah; McVeigh never explained his motivation.
I grant you that there are many commenters at this blog that go way too far in ascribing evil and dangerousness to all Muslims. Don't let that be an excuse for what I assume is your own bias --that all religious fanatics are capable of terrorist violence.
How can you logically argue that we should not have a heightened awareness of the worldwide menace that political Islam has become? Is multiculturalism and cultural relativism your creed? If so, what will it take for you to admit that tolerance must yield to security, a nuke going off in New York harbor?
I would expect the incidence of mental disorders within the Islamic community to be roughly equivalent to that of any other religious (or nonreligious) community. I've know people with both bipolar disorder and schizophrenia who have displayed a heightened religiosity. (Yes, even atheists/agnostics are not immune -- like the one I knew who woke his wife up in the middle of the night, nude and holding a sign that read "I am God." He went along meekly when she took him to the hospital psych ward, where he told all the staff that his middle initial – G – stood for “God.”)
Six years ago, my husband was diagnosed with bipolar disorder after a manic episode that turned my privately religious husband into a raving nut. Fortunately, his religiosity was annoying, not dangerous – singing hymns and preaching on a public bus, waking me at 2 am to tell me why Satan couldn’t watch TV on an airplane, and other nutty behavior. (And fortunately, he sought help. Thanks to modern medicine, he has not had another episode.)
Relativists often claim that the Koran is no more violent than the Bible. However, the central figure of Christianity is Jesus. Those parts of the Bible so disturbing to modern sensibilities are but a small part of the whole. Go into any church on Sunday, and your chances of hearing a message based on the book of Judges are slim indeed. Contrast that with Islam, whose central figure is Mohammad.
When Moslems insist that suddenly violent adherents (like this young man) are suffering from a mental disorder, I tend to believe them. However, I still think that much of the problem lies within Islam. A mental disorder forges strange connections among ideas and memories already in the brain, but the disorder does not implant ideas that were never there. It seems reasonable to me that a person who was exposed to a steady diet of Mohammad’s exploits is going to draw on those ideas/stories/memories when mentally unbalanced.
mattbert - Both Hitler and Stalin were "raised Christian" but neither practiced the faith as an adult. Neither did McVeigh. Jihadists are practicing THEIR faith.
Stalin may have been, early on, a seminary student, but as Koba he graduated soon enough to bank-robbing and other fun-filled activities.
CJ
Thank you for your post. I think any psychologist or psychology major, or even someone who took no more than 2 psychology classes in college, would agree with you. Mental disorders are ultimate truth serums in some way. A person can cover up anything when they are "sane". This alone should convince people of what is wrong with Islam.
While other users have debunked the notion of McVeigh as Christian, I think it is important to point out some things about Eric Rudolph as well:
1. His motivation for attacking abortion centers (I'm pro-choice, by the way) was NOT based on Christian values, but was based on NAZI values. Rudolph was only concerned with WHITE abortions, not abortion on the whole. He was worried about a "diluted gene pool" for whites. That is why he attacked suburban abortion clinics with mostly white clientele. The man he killed in Alabama was pro-life and gave up his life checking out the bomb. Nor was Rudolph treated like a "martyr" by the largely pro-life population of Alabama, the funeral for the dead security guard had the largest roadside crowds since the death of Bear Bryant. Yeah, the Palestinians hold big funerals like that for people who try to defuse suicide bombs. Sure, happens all the time. Ha!
2. The only reasonable "connections" he had to Christian groups were to a Traditionalist Catholic church of the Mel Gibson type that is generally considered heretical by the Catholic church as a whole. The other group he was connected to was Christian Identity which is a white supremacist group using a Christian cover, but is not affiliated with any mainstream Christian elements.
so, no, Islamopologists, we won't spot you McVeigh, and we won't spot you Rudolph, either! Try again...
Here is some home video of the atrocity,
http://kutv.com/video/?id=23467@kutv.dayport.com
Really mattbert, McViegh and Rudolph are embraced and honored as martyrs in the Christian community? And what pray tell are the passages in the Bible that directed them to do these things in the name of God? And where are the Preachers that sermonize Hitler, Stalin, and the others every Sunday? And where are the Christians that are saying, behead those who insult Christianity? I don’t know about you but I worry all the time that some Christian might knock on my door and try to convert me by the sword.
PapaBear's "leaderless resistance" can cut both ways--not against our constitutional government--but if that government fails to protect us, the people, than we are left to protect ourselves--using the 2nd Amendment (wherever legally appropriate).
Speaking to the possible existence of "sudden jihad syndrome". I feel it may go deeper than that.In 2002, my wife and I spent a month in Egypt, touring every possible archaelogical site. My evenings were spent trying to get a handle on just how Muslims felt about the war,"clash of civilizations",etc. (This was before Iraq ramped up). Our tour guide was a highly educated 29 year old with a Master's from London School of Economics. He likened the situation to France just before the Nazi invasion in WW2.Many diverse political groups existed, and they were all at each other's throats, so to speak. But once the Jackboots arrived, all differences were set aside in favor of common cause against the bigger Enemy.I see alot of similarities with current events. As radical Islam grows, lip service "moderates" will feel more comfortable showing their true colors.
jud,
Don’t forget gratuitous sex, cruel slavery, oppressive female servitude, endless war and barbaric conquest. Actually what you wrote has been written here too many times to recall. Have you read The truth about Muhammad by the founder of this site, Robert (the dancer) Spencer?