"described as suffering from a mental illness"

It's funny, but every muslim who acts on his beliefs is "suffering from a mental illness". I'm not sure if that is a PC cop out, or in fact, the darn truth.

I must however, congratulate the BBC lately for starting to show islam in its proper light. On my site is a BBC interview with British muslims who make no bones about their intention to attack and overthrow the west. Is the BBC waking up?

http://www.theres-something-about-islam.blogspot.com

Posted by: somethingaboutislam at July 2, 2006 10:58 PM

Hello all,

I read this story with some distress and im glad to hear that the priest will be okay. Two things to comment on; the first why are the brave muslim men only going after old men who for hte most part a preacing PEACE AND LOVE...aren't these muslim dogs supposed to show the bravery, strength and compassion shown by their peodiphile prophet? or I wonder if they are just following his example. I think it is the latter....Secondly; its' funny how these ignorant and gutless criminals are always labeled as suffering from some unnamed mental illness! YET, they all have one thing in common...they yell ALLAH U AKBAR just before they carry out the crime. Im seeing a link...islam = lunacy

Peaceful and tolerant islam at work.

SHUNKLEASH(PBUH)

Posted by: Shunkleash at July 2, 2006 11:02 PM

Nothing to see here. Turkey is fully compatible with the west. The only reason they won't get in is the EU is racist. so goes the official line.

Posted by: pissedoffcanadian at July 2, 2006 11:12 PM

From Jihad Watch, March 18, 2006

Turkey: Intruder Threatens Catholic Priests and Youths

"You are not a human being!" You are just a dhimmi.

"Intruder Threatens Catholic Priests and Youths," from Compass Direct, with thanks to Leslie:

March 16 (Compass) – A Turkish Muslim shouting insults against Christianity pulled a long butcher knife on two priests and a group of teenagers last Saturday evening (March 11) at a Latin Catholic church in Mersin, threatening them and their families.
In a 30-minute standoff in the town on the southern coast of Turkey, Erdal Gurel entered the parish convent of St. Antoine’s Catholic Church while 25 of the church’s young people were rehearsing for an Easter passion play.

“I was in my church office about 7:30 p.m. when I heard someone shouting and looked out in the hall to see what was happening,” Brother Hanri Leylek later told the police in a recorded statement.

Leylek, a Turkish citizen and brother in the Capuchin order, said he offered to help the stranger. But the man insisted with strong language, “I want to see the fat bearded priest.” Then he started to swear loudly and “talk nonsense,” Leylek said.

Telling the frightened parish youth to go back and lock themselves in their rehearsal room, Leylek tried to talk with Gurel and asked him to go outside. When he began to shout insults and refused to leave, the priest went to a hallway telephone to call the police.

Before the priest finished dialing, the church young people shouted a warning. He turned around to see the intruder approaching him, brandishing a 30-inch butcher knife that had been hidden behind his back.

“He started to threaten me with the knife and curse against Christianity and the church,” Leylek said.

Just then Italian priest Roberto Ferrari entered from the kitchen door. Gurel turned and dashed toward him, waving the knife and declaring in vulgar terms, “You are not a human being! I will violate your mother, your sisters, your children.”

Posted by: Hugh at July 2, 2006 11:31 PM

And this from June 15, 2006 JW:

"What has Turkey done not merely to prosecute the murderer of Don Andrea Santoro, the priest murdered on February 7, 2006, but to publicize, throughout Turkey, exactly what it was that prompted those teenagers to harass him, to demand money, and then finally to return to kill him -- he who in Trebzon (Trebizond) did nothing to anyone, but merely had a congregation of eight, or perhaps nine, people, several of them Georgian women?

Turkey may think that the Santoro episode is over, but it will never be over, just as the Armenian murders will never be over, or the bombing of the Galata synagogue, or hundreds of other outrages big and small, until the Turkish population connects what has been done, not by "Turks" but by "Muslim Turks," following the tenets, or prompted by the attitudes, of Islam, to the contents of Islam itself. The secularists, the beneficiaries of Kemalist restraints on Islam, have a duty not only to resist Erdogan, but to undo him altogether, and then to push, push even harder those Kemalist constraints which they accepted without sufficient gratitude or understanding.

Kemalism was not meant to make Turkey merely safe for commerce, for the assorted Sabancis of this world. It was meant to transform, by offering the most advanced a way out of Islam (without open apostasy) and offering the primitive a substitute cult (the cult of Ataturk replacing the cult of Muhammad, the cult of "The Turk" replacing, or limiting the appeal of, Islam). The fault of the Kemalists is not that they went to far, but that they never went far enought; as long as some could be free, they did not think they had to pursue the link between Islam and crimes committed, either in the past, or in the present, by Muslims in Turkey. Wrong.

Start with a simple case. Start with the murder of Andrea Santoro.

For more on the case, see Corriere della Sera, February 9, 2006, page 10, especially the article "Insulti e minacce al prete, il giorno prima di ucciderlo" by Marco Imarisio.

Posted by: Hugh at June 16, 2006 09:45 AM"

Posted by: Hugh at July 2, 2006 11:33 PM

I think here is where we all can shout "Jesus is Great".

Posted by: SCV at July 3, 2006 12:05 AM

"I think here is where we all can shout "Jesus is Great"."

Muslims also think Jesus is great. To get their attention, you need to be more specific: shout "Jesus is risen!" or "Jesus is Lord!" That should get their epileptic apoplectic juices going.

Posted by: Television at July 3, 2006 1:28 AM

Someone ought to remind the BBC that Asia Minor is in fact in Asia. This article has been filed under BBC News/Europe.

Posted by: Sebastien at July 3, 2006 2:18 AM

How about "Down with Mohammed"? "Death to Islam"?

Sebastien

Turkey has milked its ownership of Istanbul and that tiny 1/10th of the country that's in Europe to claim that it's an European country, like Albania or Bosnia. A more fraudulent re-positioning of geography is rare, although the central asian countries seem to claim to be Europe as well.

Incidentally, does the BBC treat Israel as a part of Europe, or Asia?

Posted by: Infidel Pride at July 3, 2006 4:47 AM

In Turkey, Christians, Jews and atheists are murdered, attacked and Blown up. Nothing is said and EU membership is not affected. If we did the same thing to Muslims, attacking imams and clerics the whole country would suffer collective punishment from the EU, government and obligatory demos and riots.

Mental illness. Anyone who attacks people in the name of Islam is suffering from a mental illness, anyone who attacks a Muslim is said to be evil. Personally I think mental illness starts when the Koran is opened.

Posted by: IceDragon at July 3, 2006 5:49 AM

On the subject of Turkey this was in The Times yesterday.
"TURKISH officials have been accused of covering up a terrorist bombing campaign in an attempt to safeguard the country’s lucrative tourist industry."

Posted by: Granny Weatherwax at July 3, 2006 5:49 AM

Holy men of all faiths in muslim countries are the targets of muslims and this violence against them is only going to increase in the coming months and years. Expect more of such attacks.

Posted by: arjun.sevak at July 3, 2006 6:14 AM

"...Police detained an unnamed 47-year-old man who they described as suffering from mental illness..."

This mental illness has a name. Its called 'ISLAM...'

Posted by: sheik yer'mami at July 3, 2006 6:23 AM

INTERESTING ARTICLE - http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-2252571.html
I found myself both drawn to the warm embrace of the Muslim community that dominates Beeston, and shocked by the views it espoused in private.

Take, for example, Anhar Ghani, a community worker at the Hamara centre on Tempest Road that was frequented by Mohammad Sidique Khan, the leader of the bombers. Ghani became my first “friend” during six weeks of living in Beeston as an undercover Sunday Times reporter pretending to be a student, and at first he displayed a generosity of spirit hard to fault.

Like me, he is in his twenties and of Bangladeshi origin, and we warmed to each other immediately. We chatted in English and Bengali about his family — he is married with one child — and how to get a job and draw up a CV. Though Ghani normally dealt only with teenagers, he went out of his way to help. In his trendy jeans and trainers, he seemed like just another hopeful in modern multicultural Britain — and I, a stranger in town, found him comforting.

But his kindness to me was coupled with a darker outlook on the wider world. I was shocked when one day at the Hamara centre he began explaining how the London bombers could be seen as martyrs.

“The western mind and the Muslim mind are two different psychologies,” he said. “The Muslim mind will see that this life means nothing unless I sacrifice myself for Allah.”

Inside I flinched, but outwardly I nodded with a look of sympathy. I did not want him to close up as much of the community had done after last summer’s attacks. I wanted him to speak honestly.

“My life means nothing, you know,” he continued. “I would give up this evil, two-seconds of a life.” Earthly experience, I think he meant, was but a moment compared with paradise to come.

Later he went on to eulogise Abdullah Faisal, a firebrand Islamic cleric who was imprisoned in 2003 for inciting the murder of Jews. Faisal, said to have been a strong influence on the 7/7 bombers, has advocated the spreading of Islam “by the Kalashnikov” and declared that one aim of jihad is to “lessen the population of unbelievers”.

Was I dreaming? Had I time-travelled? I had to keep reminding myself that this was Yorkshire, land of broad vowels, warm beer and Geoff Boycott; but it felt like Pakistan, a country I know and the country that two of the bombers visited, apparently for training, before their attacks.

As I brought up 9/11, I was taken aback when he began to talk about a “western conspiracy against Muslims”. I had been in London on the day of the 2001 attacks and like everyone else had watched in amazement and horror as the twin towers fell. I had never doubted that Osama Bin Laden had inspired the atrocity and that Islamic terrorists had perpetrated it.
Jabbar doubted it. He told me the 9/11 attacks were a conspiracy and that he had a DVD which proved it. So were the London bombings, he said.

I found myself in a ferment of mixed emotions. Here was a man who had shown great courtesy and kindness, yet believed the West was so corrupt it had staged terrorist attacks against itself. How could he be so deluded? Jabbar, however, was far from alone. One of the sternest advocates of conspiracy theory was Imran Bham, a shopkeeper running Idoo PC, a computer equipment shop.

“You don’t get anywhere with the dirty kuffar (infidels),” he told me, claiming there was a widespread conspiracy against Muslims and that the 7/7 bombings were part of it. “These brothers never did it,” he said. “And understand this. In order for America and Britain to go to Iraq they have to have reasons and sometimes, I’m afraid, if you haven’t got a reason, you make up that reason.”

He showed me pictures of the bomb blasts from the BBC on his computer, claiming ID documents must have been placed at the scene by officials because the blasts would have destroyed them.

He offered me £5 to go and buy a piece of beef, telling me to place the meat in the oven alongside my credit card, passport and other ID and then turn the temperature up. After half an hour at medium temperature, he said, the documents would melt but the beef would only be sweating. I could then draw my own conclusions.

Once again, I felt as if I had entered a strange bubble, a world where the reality I had known before had been suspended. Bham then asked me if I would ever blow myself up for Islam. I replied that the Koran says you should not harm innocent people.

“What Koran was that?” he countered. “Don’t fool yourself by saying jihad is a struggle within, to get on with life, to motivate myself to get up for prayers and that sort of thing,” he said. “That’s not jihad. Who told you that?”

AFTER six weeks I left Beeston quietly, slipping away to Leeds and back to London by train. As I travelled out of the Victorian streets towards Leeds city centre, I felt the claustrophobia lifting. It was relief to rejoin a wider, more diverse world.

I felt, too, guilt at having moved among the people of Beeston under a false guise. They had welcomed me; but they had also revealed an important facet of Muslim life in Britain today. While I was there an imam of the Bengali mosque, Hamid Ali, had praised the bombers, saying their actions would make non-Muslims “prick up their ears” and listen. I had learnt such sentiments are, one way or another, widespread in Beeston. Ghani, Bham, Jabbar and many others believe in some form of conspiracy against Muslims.

Even the seemingly sensible Sabeer insisted the western “enemy” was out to get him. “It’s the way of the enemy really, the kuffar,” he said. “I’ve always known it as divide and rule.”

He’s utterly wrong in seeing a conspiracy, in my view — but he’s right that there is division. The Muslims of Beeston and other such areas are retreating, not engaging.

“Look what we can do if we stick together,” Sabeer had told me as we drove through an area completely dominated by Muslim shops, houses and schools. But look at the price isolation also exacts.

Sabeer’s view was, I believe, a defensive reaction to a perceived threat. But it is also a stance coupled with an idea of a global Islamic “brotherhood” taking precedence over other communities.

Unless the cycle of Muslim suspicion and separation can be broken, the dangers will remain. Ghani and his friends will continue to feel that, as he claimed, the western mind and the Muslim mind are irreconcilable.

But for me this is a false dichotomy. Beeston brought home that I cannot separate what is Islamic about me from what is “western”. I do not see myself through the prism of us versus them, good versus evil, Muslim versus kuffar.

I’d far rather embrace the things we share.

ROBERT - Your thoughts ?

Posted by: Churchill1938 at July 3, 2006 6:41 AM

I have read somewhere that only 30% of the Turkish population is "civilized" (to western standarts). Turkey presently has around 70 million people, and two thirds of that makes 50 million potential nut jobs. Wonderful! How I adore the non-democratic EU leadership... We live in a dictatorship based in Brussels and we don't even notice it.

Posted by: cruzado at July 3, 2006 7:11 AM

"Mental illness" was also the reason quickly given for the murder by a Jordanian soldier (whom none of his fellow Jordanians tried to stop) of six little Israeli schoolgirls taken on a school outing to visit a "Peace Garden" in Jordan. "Mental illness" was what explained the similar behavior of an Egyptian soldier who killed several Israeli tourists, including children. "Mental illness" no doubt will be invoked to explain the attempt to run fellow students down in "The Pit" in Chapel Hill by recent Muslim graduate (with his "clear and distinct ideas") Taheri-Reza (or is it Reza-Taheri?).

"Mental illness."

Posted by: Hugh at July 3, 2006 8:33 AM

A few months ago on the southern turkish touristcoast a 10 year old german girl on holidays with her family has been kidnapped,abused,mutilated,and killed by an icecream vendor in his mid-thirties. He was declared to have a Mental Illness.

Posted by: cosmicAvenger at July 3, 2006 8:53 AM

The muslim murder suspect of the two little Belgian girls who had disappeared and whose bodies had been found earlier this week is by the Belgian Authorties diagnosed as suffering from a `Mental Illnes´.

Posted by: cosmicAvenger at July 3, 2006 9:04 AM

Speaking of muslims and knife attacks, I was once almost knifed by a muslim now that I remember a story from my youth.

It was in the 8th grade, I was about 13 or 14, and myself and two friends were playing in an after school ball hockey game in the gymnasium. My friend Kent, always a big mouth, made some comment to this arabic looking kid during rough play.

After the game, we left the gymnasium. About 10 minutes later, I noticed as we went through the hallways that this kid was following us. I figured he wanted to fight Kent, but Kent was not interested. So I told him so. But he didn't care. He kept on stalking us as we made our way through the school. Eventually, I went to him and told him, that he would have to go through me first to get to my friend.

He had no response to that. He was like a terminator cyborg. He had nothing to say. He had this obsessed and focused look like he was a robot on a mission. We turned around and continued on our way. How can you fight someone who doesn't want to fight, I thought. So it didn't make any sense that he was still after Kent.

But when we got outside, I got my answer. He didn't want to fight Kent. He just wanted to stab him. The kid pulled a knife out of his pants and yelled some war cry. Was it 'All to the Snackbar'? I don't know, but we couldn't believe it.

This school was in a prestigious and wealthy area. School violence was unheard of. Weapons were unheared of. School fights were extremely rare. This arabic kid, our age, pulls out a knife and goes crazy. I'm ashamed to admit, but I ran, as we all did.

I'm sure he must have felt like a big man after that.

Rather than confront Kent in the gymnasium, he stalked Kent waiting for a good time to strike with his knife. Fortunately, we were with him, I noticed his stalker, and he was unable to sneak up on him and stab my friend. Typically islamic. Rather than confront and settle a dispute on the spot, they harbor a grudge, and try to get revenge later on when they have the advantage of surprise and the advantage of a weapon.

At the time, I had never heard of islam. I just thought there was something wrong with that kid. Little did I know that his mental illness was islam.

Posted by: somethingaboutislam at July 3, 2006 9:19 AM

"Mental Illness" or "Militant Islamist"?

That should be the subject of editorial debate for the era we have entered.

To excuse away this global phenomenon of homicidally-militant religious petty-tyrants (little Mohammads) as an 'unimportant', and thus 'harmless' (as far as defending your Civilization against it goes), 'symptom' of 'weak minds/personalities' completely fails to confront the underlying motivation:

-the Koran's inherently violent despotic dogmas. [ Sura 9:29-30, et al.]

Without the media confronting (reading and grasping historically, psychologically/philosophically) the murderous suras and the demented Hadiths, the media's "analysis" remains about as deep as the arguments that the New York Times -and their glib apologists- use to excuse their release of classified security information* that undermines the "War On Terror" (more realistically called WW III- the fight against Imperialistic Islam).

Journalists, with few exceptions, show NO sign of ever having read the Muslim texts. It's called basic backround research. You do it if you go to interview a 98 year old women who is the oldest member of the Grange chapter in a country town. So why it hasn't been done with a self-declared planetary movement to overthrow modern Civilization and replace with with a global theocratic gulag worshipping the 7th century is explained by ONLY one thing:

-abject cowardice.

The same utter failure of will and testicular fortitude (posing as "concern for the sensibilities of others") that kept the Mohammad Cartoon Jihad images hidden from the people of the West in their press and on T.V.

The media has devolved into a Grand Eunuch Society. It's motto:

Hear no Muslims, See no Muslims, Speak no Muslims.

And until the media starts to honestly wrestle with this underlying, tactical/purposeful confusion of "Mental Illness"/"Militant Islamicist", little is to be learned from these outlets but how well they can disguise the bloody reality before you with their 'smiley-faced bandages' -AKA P.C. editorializing in place of hard-hitting reporting.

It apparently would be too "bigoted" to explain that the Koran inspires these terroristic acts, -from a random priest being stabbed in Turkey to a school full of first graders in Beslan being slaughtered.

But, if you won't name the illness you can't prepare the anti-toxin.

It's the Koran, stupid!

_________________________________________________

*["Geewhiz, every intelligent jihadist surely knew about the NSA's phone record data-mining and the SWIFT money-transfer program, so what's the big deal if we illegally release this classified data 'in the public interest'? C'mon, you don't mean that we need to keep secrets from anybody about anything? Why, just next week, we'll have a four-page full-color fold-out on How-To-Contruct-a-Nuke-in-your-Garage, since its Old News... I mean, "Trinity" is over 60 years in the past, now! And Pakistan already has a bomb, so the jihadists probably got a diagram of the configuration of the explosive lens' from the A.Q. Khan network by now, right? We're trying to let the kid in Newark keep up with what our enemies already know. How'z that a problem?"]

Posted by: profitsbeard at July 3, 2006 11:33 AM

FOX news just had a short feature on this attack along with reports on the attacks on two other Priests in Turkey.FOX's feature talked about attacks on Christianity in the Muslims world. This short feature also mentioned how some do not want Turkey which FOX described as a majority Muslim country in the EU, because of issues of religious freedom in Turkey.A refreshingly frank report. I wonder how long it will be before CAIR complains about the "fair and balanced" report on Muslim Turkey.

Posted by: Roxane at July 3, 2006 12:47 PM

"if only the stupid westerners would STOP going to turkey and any muslim country for holiday..."
-- from a poster above

They want to see the Hagia Sophia. They want to see the Hippodrome. They want to see the Cistern. They want to see the paintings preserved inside Chora, or the Kariye Djami. They want to see the antiquities of Ephesus. They want to see Hanfmann's unearthed synagogue at Sardis. They want, or wanted, to see Zeugma before it was flooded, and now to see what the Turks put in the local museum. They want to see, because they wish to see everything, the Blue Mosque and Topkapi too. And to see them they have to go to Turkey. They would prefer that Kemalism not be in retreat but instead steadily advancing on the mental terrain. They would prefer that Turkey would steadily de-islamize, possibly by continuing the Cult of Ataturk (to replace that of Muhammad), and by using every occasion to emphasize "Turkness" as opposed to "Uruba," Arabness.

But what can they do? The palimpsest of civilizations remains, and if the financial beneficiary of these largely non-Muslim artistic riches is a Muslim state and people, that is possibly regrettable. But unless there is another attack or two, the tourists will probably keep coming.

Posted by: Hugh at July 3, 2006 8:42 PM