That Chapel Hill Muslim, Taheri-Azar, the one who tried to run down and murder fellow students standing in The Pit, within walking distance of Silent Sam, now is attempting to plead insanity.
But he left handwritten pages showing that he was anything but insane, and holds, as he so proudly quoted the Cartesian phrase, “clear and distinct ideas.” That was possibly the only thing he did remember about Descartes from the Intro. to Western Phil. he must have taken as an undergraduate. His handwritten nonsense does not show insanity. It shows a Muslim Believer who takes his Islam seriously, and who is prepared to act on it. There is not one thing in those handwritten notes that he was so proud of — they can be found online, possibly in the Archives of this very website — that would be taken as insanity by, say, “Mike” (Maher) Hawash, or John Walker Lindh, or Richard Reid, or, for that matter, Sheikh al-Azhar (that is, the head of Al-Azhar), or Al-Qaradawi, or any Muslim cleric anywhere.
Of course, if the defense lawyer is attempting to suggest that anyone who believes this kind of thing must be, simply must be, insane, he might get his client a lighter sentence, or the asylum rather than prison. But then he’ll have some explaining to do to the world’s Muslims. Just what is it about Taheri-Azer’s faith, and his handwritten prison testament, that you are suggesting indicates he is insane? Is it insane to wish to kill Infidels who do not know their place? Is it insane, or simply very brave, to do so knowing you will be caught? Is it insane to take seriously the texts and tenets of Islam? Is it insane to take this Qur’anic passage to heart, and this one, and that one? Or these few hundred Hadith? Is it insane to behave as you are sure Muhammad, uswa hasana, al-insan al-kamil, would want a brave Muslim to behave, even today, in the midst of Infidels in Chapel Hill, or perhaps especially at such a time, and in such a place?
The son of Iranian exiles, secular in orientation, rediscovers in his mental desarroi the grid of Islam, the prism of Islam, Islam the System of Total Regulation, Islam the Complete Explanation for Everything. Islam — That Is All Ye Know On Earth, and All Ye Need To Know.
So, this “moderate” Muslim who never before has given signs of being the other kind, the son of moderates himself, now gets in his powerful car, and drives to the place where his innocent fellow students stand around and chat, and he revs up the car, and aims it right at this one, and then at that one, hoping to kill or maim as many Infidels as he can. And he writes out his whole little Message to The World, or rather to his lawyer, in longhand.
Is that insane, according to the texts and tenets of Islam? Or is it admirable, according to those texts and tenets and those who believe in them? And had it succeeded, had he indeed “struck terror into the hearts of Unbelievers,” what conceivable objection in Islam could be made to that? Is Taheri-Azer any more insane than the thousands of “Palestinian” Arabs who have been conducting similar attacks, or those far worse, for the last few decades? Is he more or less “insane” than those who bombed the busses in London? The Atocha subway station in Madrid? The synagogue in Djerba? The hotel in Marrakech? Or those who killed Theo van Gogh and threaten to kill Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Geert Wilders and a half-dozen others in the Netherlands alone? Those who seized the Moscow theatregoers? Those who behead Buddhist farmers and teachers and monks in southern Thailand? Those who bomb the resort in Bali, or who burn down thousands of churches in the Moluccas, or who behead Christian schoolgirls on their way to school? Are all those people “insane” by Muslim lights, or are they simply the most dutiful Muslims? Are they not actively participating, rather than supporting only indirectly, the Jihad to spread Islam? They are making sure that where it has already spread, it remains dominant, and no pesky Christian schoolgirls walking along the road are going to get in the get in the way of that understanding.
All, all of it, the acts of those who are “insane”?