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Exposing the role that Islamic jihad theology and ideology play in the modern global conflicts

Chattanooga jihad murderer viewed Awlaki material online, spoke of Islamic martyrdom as long ago as 2013

Jul 21, 2015 11:45 am By Robert Spencer

Mohammad Youssuf AbdulazeezAuthorities, adamantine in their determination to ignore Islamic jihad, are still searching for a motive. “In Chattanooga, a Young Man in a Downward Spiral,” by Manny Fernandez, Alan Blinder, Eric Schmitt and Richard Pérez-Peña, New York Times, July 20, 2015:

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — The last time family members here saw Mohammod Abdulazeez was last Tuesday, but they did not worry about his absence because they thought he was heading back to the Nashville suburb where he had found steady work. He had even talked about a coming business trip. They dared to hope that he was putting his troubles behind him….

As the F.B.I. sent more investigators into this city Monday to explore dozens of possible leads, a picture took shape of a deeply troubled young man who struggled with mental illness and drug abuse at the same time he found himself alienated from United States policies in the Arab world, according to the authorities, friends and the family representative.

The authorities who were examining Mr. Abdulazeez’s computer found that he had viewed material connected to Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical American-born cleric who was killed in Yemen by an American drone strike in 2011, according to a person with knowledge of the investigation.

Mr. Abdulazeez had suffered for years from depression and possibly from bipolar disorder, the family representative said, adding that he had abused alcohol and possibly prescription painkillers and had gained and lost jobs. In his last months, he faced the prospect of both bankruptcy and jail time on a drunken-driving charge….

In a few pages of rambling notes being pored over by the F.B.I., Mr. Abdulazeez wrote about suicide and martyrdom as long ago as 2013, a senior United States intelligence official said….

The family representative said the notes, all more than a year old, expressed Mr. Abdulazeez’s discontent with United States military action in the Middle East, and “talks about his life being worthless.” They are less a diary, the representative said, than a scattershot set of observations, some of them “gibberish,” while others “were clearly things that were written by someone who was very depressed.”

“These are not the most ‘I’m going to martyr myself’ sort of statements,” the representative said. “It’s pretty much what you’d expect from a depressed person who is reading stuff about this and is like, ‘This is a great idea.’ ”

The authorities said they were investigating what they described as a likelihood that Mr. Abdulazeez received some kind of assistance in organizing his attack, perhaps financial aid in obtaining weapons. But it remains unclear whether anyone who helped him was aware of what he intended to do, or when….

On July 11, Mr. Abdulazeez stocked up on ammunition at an area Walmart. Two days later, he wrote in his blog long entries on Islam, describing the world as a prison and cautioning, “Don’t be fooled by your desires, this life is short and bitter and the opportunity to submit to allah may pass you by.”

Just hours before the shooting, he sent a text to a friend with a link to an Islamic verse saying, “Whosoever shows enmity to a friend of Mine, then I have declared war against him.”

Yet none of his known writings indicate actual plans for an assault, or the reasoning behind it, leaving investigators still searching for a motive.

Only because they are willfully blind to what is staring them in the face.

Mr. Abdulazeez received a diagnosis of mental illness when he was in his early teens. He was treated with medication in high school and college, but “he wasn’t always good about taking them,” the family representative said. Law enforcement officials confirmed that they too had learned that he had serious psychological problems.

He turned to drugs and alcohol, and family members tried to get him into a rehab program. Despite their fears for his future, they never thought he would become violent, the representative said. In one instance, limits on the family’s insurance coverage thwarted their plan to have him go into rehab.

Despite his troubles, Mr. Abdulazeez graduated in 2012 from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga with a bachelor’s degree in engineering. He was born in Kuwait, to parents who were from Jordan, but grew up in this area, and was a naturalized American citizen….

He went to work in 2013 at a nuclear power plant near Cleveland, but was fired within days because he failed a drug test, and eventually returned to Chattanooga. He had been served an eviction notice at an apartment he rented near Cleveland for not paying the rent.

Last year, he spent seven months in Jordan, where he had relatives, a trip that remains a focus of the F.B.I.’s investigation with the aid of Jordanian authorities. Investigators want to know whom he met there, and whether someone he came into contact with might have inspired the attacks, or whether daily exposure to news and conversation about the war in neighboring Syria somehow set in motion his deadly planning.

The intelligence official said there was still no evidence that Mr. Abdulazeez was directed or inspired by the Islamic State or any other extremist group, although the official cautioned that forensic testing of his computer and phone, which could yield crucial evidence, was not yet complete….

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Filed Under: American jihadis, Featured, Jihad in the U.S., willful ignorance Tagged With: Mohammod Abdulazeez


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Comments

  1. Susan B says

    Jul 21, 2015 at 12:02 pm

    “Mr. Abdulazeez received a diagnosis of mental illness” islam is a mental illness. If he left a copy of a koran on his floor and the FBI tripped on it they still wouldn’t be able to figure it out. Where are the FBI getting their recruits, grade school dropouts. Sorry an insult to grade school dropouts who would be able to figure it out.

    • calmdown says

      Jul 21, 2015 at 10:53 pm

      The FBI have been ordered never to profile due to religion or ideology. So you’ve got a bunch of agents trying to prove that this horrible incident was caused by anything but. What I don’t get is why, when devout muslims are not ashamed of their religion, of what the hadith, the sunna and the koran teach, what mohummed taught and did, when they openly post their thoughts online, everybody else is bending over backwards trying to contradict them. Personally, I’d take them at their word.

    • Shane says

      Jul 22, 2015 at 10:08 am

      President Hussein Obama ordered the words “Jihad” and “Islam” removed from our country’s counter-terrorism manuals, and he fired Robert Spencer as an adviser on jihad. Obama and the left are willfully ignorant about the reason Muslims turn to violence; they are Islamic jihadists killing the infidels, blasphemers, and apostates.

  2. Jovial Joe says

    Jul 21, 2015 at 12:07 pm

    The cause of this man’s ‘downward spiral’ is not actually ‘mental illness’ but what Hugh Fitzgerald terms ‘Inshallah-fatalism’ – that phenomenon which induces a certain apathy in muslims towards life and its enchantments caused by their all-consumming obsession with an imagined sky fairy (which they pray to 5 times a day like clockwork), making things such as holding down a job and paying the rent seem meaningless. Thus any opportunity they have to depart from this mortal coil is seen as a blessed relief from the shear pointlessness of it all.

    • john spielman says

      Jul 21, 2015 at 12:28 pm

      plus they fantasize over the drunken brothel in the sky where wine and 72 “perpetual” virgins await their master’s manhood ( plus boys as well to satisfy them when they tire of heterosexual excesses)
      islam is wicked to the core from misrepresenting the nature of God, to works righteous theology, to the paradise of God becoming an alcohol fueled whore house

    • Shane says

      Jul 22, 2015 at 10:11 am

      There are hundreds of thousands of Americans who struggle with mental illneses and substance abuse problems who do not attack our military facilities. This man wanted to become a martyr for Allah by dying in a battle with the hated infidels.

  3. Michael Copeland says

    Jul 21, 2015 at 12:12 pm

    Authorities wondered “whether daily exposure to news and conversation about the war in neighboring Syria somehow set in motion his deadly planning.”
    What about daily exposure in the Koran to commands to kill the infidel?

  4. wildjew says

    Jul 21, 2015 at 12:13 pm

    Fox News host Martha MacCallum had at least one apologist for Islam this morning as an expert on this jihadist who she (a liberal radio talk show host) said suffered from depression. Can’t Fox News get an honest scholar on Islam? Does Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal have that much influence over MacCallum, Bill O’Reilly and the others at Fox?

  5. miriamrove says

    Jul 21, 2015 at 12:35 pm

    Indeed he had a mental disease. It is called Islam. m

  6. jihad3tracker says

    Jul 21, 2015 at 1:10 pm

    ********* FLORIDA GUNSHOP OWNER DECLARES HIS STORE IS A “MUSLIM-FREE ZONE” *********

    This very brave guy is of course going to get a ton of sh*t for his doing something that makes perfect sense.

    http://wfla.com/2015/07/20/inverness-gun-shop-owner-declares-store-muslim-free-zone/

    Maybe we should sent him a short email of support.

    His inbox will be full of Allah’s wrath, and a show of counter jihad support might help in the coming struggle to keep that policy in force.

    • jihad3tracker says

      Jul 21, 2015 at 1:38 pm

      And, for your chuckle of the day, check the comment section of that article . . . A Muslima makes the mistake of mentioning Pam and Robert in a post, and someone jumps in with a decently long refuation of her, including info on Pam and Robert.

      Just for the heck of it, consider adding a few sentences to that verbal riot . . . The gunshop owner has really touched a nerve. There will be one helluva reaction in dhimmi mainstream media.

  7. Rebecca says

    Jul 21, 2015 at 1:50 pm

    contrast this reaction to the shooting in Charleston.
    Everyone was quick to identify the cause- racism.
    Maybe he was depressed, maybe he was struggling financially- and that led him to RADICAL ISLAM. Just SAY it. The facts are all right in front of you, and ur standing with a towel ur eyes. What is wrong with our government? how many more innocent people have to get killed?

  8. Walter Sieruk says

    Jul 21, 2015 at 2:46 pm

    it need to be restated from yesterday that this jihad shooter at Chattanooga was as blind to the reality of the truth and he was ignorant and deluded. He was blinded because he way under the deception of the false teachings of Islam. For in his murderous actions of the jihad he hoped by become a “martyr.” He is now literally now in hell and not in any kind of paradise [heaven] .. For example ,the Bible teaches that a murder “shall not inherit the kingdom of heaven.” Galatians 5:21. [K.J.V.]

  9. Angemon says

    Jul 21, 2015 at 3:39 pm

    Isn’t the FBI looking for a reason? Maybe they should start thinking outside the box. By which I mean they should take the old, pre-2010, counter-terrorism manuals, out of the box, read them and look at the evidence again.

    • underbed cat says

      Jul 21, 2015 at 8:40 pm

      Briefly, if the 9/11 Commission Report (1st edition ) had stood its’ ground in the accuracy of the investigation, ignored complaints from muslim organizations request to remove “offensive but true” doctrine from later copies and the if we would have had educated government leaders who had some sense of history, we may not have been so easily deceived. Electing the first black president became our 1st objective and national security redefined a religion as a race to be protected. Even though the Holy Land trial won a conviction, the stage was set and the actors wanted the show to continue. Now the world has tremendous problems, leaders are mystified and besides” the government will take care of the issues.” The police departments are the new targets and the faithful will aid the deception.

      We have someone who may deliver the message, but first we have to listen, and as crazy as the situation is I think Trump may be the only one to break thru the numbing paralysis of thought, he has my attention when he talks honestly how Washington works. How things get done. It is influence and there is alot coming from sources who seem to only agree on our destruction. In fact it may have started…

  10. Cecilia Ellis says

    Jul 21, 2015 at 4:12 pm

    “The intelligence official said there was still no evidence that Mr. Abdulazeez was directed or inspired by the Islamic State or any other extremist group, although the official cautioned that forensic testing of his computer and phone, which could yield crucial evidence, was not yet complete….”

    Ironic it is that the Obama administration would rely so heavily upon undeniable “evidence” that Abdulazeez was somehow inspired by any one of the jihadist terror groups that now saturate the world. Consider the following examples of Obama’s leap to unsubstantiated reports:

    As Obama said, regarding the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., approximately four days after the event:
    “Now, I’ve — I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that. But I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home; and number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there is a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. And that’s just a fact.”

    See following link for entire transcript:
    http://www.democracynow.org/2009/7/23/obama_cambridge_police_acted_stupidly_in

    Or as Obama said, three days after the Ferguson, MO shooting, “The death of Michael Brown is heartbreaking, and Michelle and I send our deepest condolences to his family and his community at this very difficult time. As Attorney General Holder has indicated, the Department of Justice is investigating the situation along with local officials, and they will continue to direct resources to the case as needed. I know the events of the past few days have prompted strong passions, but as details unfold, I urge everyone in Ferguson, Missouri, and across the country, to remember this young man through reflection and understanding. We should comfort each other and talk with one another in a way that heals, not in a way that wounds. Along with our prayers, that’s what Michael and his family, and our broader American community, deserve.”

    See following link for entire article:
    https://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/08/12/president-obama-issues-statement-death-michael-brown

    Or as Obama said, regarding Trayvon Martin: “You know, if I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon . . . I think they are right to expect that all of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves, and we are going to get to the bottom of exactly what happened.”

    See following link for entire comments:
    http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/23/obama-makes-first-comments-on-trayvon-martin-shooting/?_r=0

    Given Obama’s rushes to judgment in the cited instances, consider his refusal to address the pivotal cause for the Chattanooga massacre, until crucial evidence is discovered, in light of the following facts:

    1. The uncle of Abdulazeez, the one with whom he stayed allegedly for seven months in Jordan, has been arrested by the Jordanians.
    2. Abdulazeez had read comments made by Awlaki online and referred to those comments in his own writings.
    3. Abdulazeez wrote of martyrdom as early as 2013.
    4. Abdulazeez struggled with being a devout Muslim.
    5. Abdulazeez, citing Qur’anic verses and Hadith sources, blogged strongly for armed jihad.
    6. ISIS called exhorted devout Muslims to conduct jihad operations against American military during Ramadan.
    7. Abdulazeez’s father had once been on a terrorism watch list.
    8. Abdulazeez spoke of the victimization of and discrimination against Muslims in the United States.
    9. Abdulazeez frequently practiced target shooting and chose soft targets as his victims.
    10. Abdulazeez, in a text to a friend the night before his murderous rampage, quoted from a Hadith that specifically declared war on enemies of Muslims, supporting Qur’anic mandates to carry out jihad.

    Only a few hours ago, as a result of the overwhelming outrage of Americans, Obama ordered that the American Flag at the White House be flown at half-staff, in honor of those military that died in Chattanooga. He did not mention, however, that they died at the hands of a devout Muslim. (As a side issue, Obama also, once again, vowed to pound ISIL (ISIS) from the air, to both “destroy and degrade” them.)

    Conclusion: The Obama administration will not identify devotion to Islam’s Quran and Hadith as the critical inspiration for all jihadist attacks on and brutal murder of those who reject Islam. In the end, Abulazeez will be identified as a lone-wolf who experienced mental problems and who confused those issues with his extremist interpretation of the Religion of Peace. The case will be closed . . . until the next attack occurs . . . and it will.

    • jihad3tracker says

      Jul 21, 2015 at 5:48 pm

      ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! AMAZINGLY COMPREHENSIVE POST ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! !

      THANK YOU CECILIA . . .

    • My Shari'a Moor says

      Jul 21, 2015 at 8:35 pm

      Cecilia:
      Thanx for your incisive observations re: BHO & his squalid ‘rushes to (mis)judgement’ in these specious cases of White racism vs. actual RACIST Islamic jihad!
      Chances are, Baraka-the-Luo-Sunni will ALWAYS be known as the US’ most RACIALIST president during its modern era.

    • Jesus says

      Jul 22, 2015 at 10:16 am

      Whether or not he recognized Al-Baghdadi as khalifa or just some pretender or whatever that doesn’t make a difference. USA has been at war with Muslims for years. He made his motive crystal clear quoting Allah’s words as related by Muhammad, “Whoever shows enmity to my wali, I declare war against him.” He saw himself as avenging his brothers and sisters who have been under constant bombardment by this country and its proxies for years upon years. And what’s the response by yalls? Let’s send some B-52 bombers out into their desert and bomb them some more. Good god you freaking savages burying your bombs like semen in the womb of what was once a fertile crescent and not expect her to birth a demon.

      “For they sow the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.” Hosea 8:7

  11. abad says

    Jul 21, 2015 at 6:04 pm

    Islam is a mental illness, to be sure – but my beef with the media is that is has been playing the depression card with Abdulazeez.

    It is an insult to those who truly have depression, whether chronic or not.

    Because people who are depressed do NOT kill others in the name of Allah. They don’t.

    Period.

  12. David M says

    Jul 21, 2015 at 9:10 pm

    On Australian radio this morning they were blaming the shootings on his mental illness, unemployment & poverty. Islam wasn’t mentioned at all. I bet if he came out & told them it was due to Islam they would just dismiss it, they are so keen to find anything except Islam as the cause.

    • Raja says

      Jul 22, 2015 at 8:28 am

      David M,

      You are right The powers that be and the short sighted idiots bend backward to shield every Jihadist and his evil deed. In the process they are insulting every non muslim in world who is earning less than 2 dollars a day. The headcount of this real peace loving global-tribe should be around 3 billion and these stupid Western leaders are insulting this lot whenever they are blaming poverty, lack of education, poor governance etc for Islamic Jihad. Is their egos so bloated that they should deliver this kind of cruel injustice day in and day out? Self propelled Jihad machine with the motive to kill all non muslims and apostate muslims is a real sickness a Jihadi carries and some day the Western leader will face it with something like 911..

  13. Dave J says

    Jul 22, 2015 at 1:54 am

    Islam was founded by the mentally ill, for the mentally ill.

    The modern civilized world should not be afraid to say so.

    An unfortunate combination of inbreeding and cultural indoctrination has resulted in a huge population of potential timebombs like the Chattanooga murderer.

    Meanwhile the FBI is “searching for a motive”. None are so blind as those who will not see.

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