Those allegations pander to the credulous “underlying causes” crowd, for whom everything causes jihad — hurt feelings, inclement weather, cartoons, sunspots, bad hair days — except the the jihadist ideology, rooted in Islamic texts and traditions. “Twentieth 9/11 hijacker was radicalised by the ‘daily racism’ he suffered in France, says his mother,” by Andy Milne for the Daily Mail, September 2:
The mother of Zacarias Moussaoui, the only terrorist convicted over 9/11 attacks, says the racism her son suffered in France helped turn him to extremism.
The world is full of examples of racism that somehow failed to spawn a culture of suicide terrorism.
Moussaoui was jailed for life for plotting with the other al-Qaeda members to fly airliners into the twin towers, but did not take part in the attacks after the terrorists leadership had doubts about his reliability.
His mother, Aicha el-Wafi, said the seeds for the attacks were planted when her son was abused for his races as a teenager in France.
She said he suffered daily racism when he lived with her in the city of Narbonne, southern France, where he was born after his parents emmigrated from Morocco.
She said he was called a ‘dirty Arab and dirty negro’
‘These are words that kill a child when he is 16, 18, 19 years of age,’ Miss el-Waifi told CNN.
That’s a very, very special age. It’s called “old enough to know better.”
‘My son was born in France, my son loves France … but he was not accepted. He was rejected by French society.’
Oh, and also…
‘He loved a girl he was forbidden from seeing… well the Islamists and the extremists found a grievance in the heart of my son.’
She accepts that her son became an extremist but still maintains he had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.
He was jailed for life for criminal conspiracy after being arrested in Minnesota after staff at a flying school where he took lessons reported he was behaving suspiciously.
He told his trial in Virginia that he had been due to pilot an airliner into the White House with Richard Reid, the terrorist who tried to blow up an airliner with explosives in his shoe.
A jury sentenced him to life in the Federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.
When he was found guilty he shouted:’You will not get my blood!’
Moussaoui’s father had beaten their mother until he left the family in 1972. After that, his mother says they lived a comfortable middle-class lifestyle…