No Islamic jihadist fails to note the significance of the Qur’an’s designation of the Jews as the worst enemies of the Muslims (5:82).
“Tsarnaev friend tells of beliefs in conspiracies,” by Sally Jacobs for the Boston Globe, August 8:
It was a most unlikely friendship.
The elderly man was an invalid and a lifelong Catholic recently converted to Islam. The younger man was a robust Russian immigrant, as proud of his muscled physique as he was devout in his Islamic faith. But somehow in the back row of a Cambridge mosque over a series of Friday afternoons, the boisterous boxer and the suburban senior developed a rare connection.
“Tamerlan Tsarnaev was my friend and we talked about everything from politics to religion,” said Donald Larking, 67, who began attending the Islamic Society of Boston mosque in Cambridge a couple of years ago at Tsarnaev’s suggestion. “He was very, very religious. He believed that the Koran was the one true word and he loved it.”
Larking has been identified in news media reports as a confidant of Tsarnaev, but he has never, until now, spoken publicly about their bond, and his apparent influence on the younger man. It was Larking who introduced Tsarnaev, who has been implicated in the Boston Marathon bombings and died in a shootout with police in April, to several right-wing publications colored by conspiracy theories.
Last year he gave Tsarnaev a subscription to The American Free Press, which has been criticized for promoting anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, for a Christmas gift. He also loaned his young friend his own copies of “The Sovereign, newspaper of the Resistance!” which suggests on its website that US military explosives were involved in the World Trade Center collapse. But Larking said that Tsarnaev, who was 24 when the two men met, had strong political views long before then.
“He believed that 9/11 was an inside job and that the government had pulled it off,” recalled Larking. “His mother believed that, too. He didn’t like George Bush for torturing prisoners, but he didn’t really like Obama either.”
Investigators have speculated that Tsarnaev and his younger brother, Dzhokhar, who has been charged in connection with the bombings, were probably inspired by extremist Islamic propaganda. But Tsarnaev’s conversations with Larking suggest the elder Tsarnaev may have had a more complex political world view, colored in part by his belief in domestic conspiracy theories. The FBI declined to comment yesterday….
These things are not mutually exclusive, except in the minds of hard-Left reporters who are desperate to exonerate Islamic texts and teachings from any responsibility for the jihad bombings.
Tsarnaev also urged Larking to grow a beard saying, as Larking recalled it, “that all Muslim men needed beards. So, I said, “˜OK.” ” When Larking began growing a beard, Tsarnaev came to his home every several weeks to trim and take care of it.
“He was very kind,” Larking said….
One of Tsarnaev’s stronger political beliefs was that America was too involved in the affairs of nations around the world and should mind its own business. He often criticized Obama for US intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq, Larking said. During the 2012 presidential campaign, Tsarnaev spoke in support of conservative Ron Paul, a fierce proponent of non-intervention overseas.
About a year ago, Tsarnaev handed his Cambridge landlord, Joanna Herlihy, a copy of the book, The Protocol of the Elders of Zion, a tract that purports to describe a plan by Jewish leaders to take over the world. Long ago discredited, it was first published in Russia over a century ago.
“This is a good book,” he told her, as she recalled….