Ihsan Bagby, an associate professor of Islamic studies at the University of Kentucky, spoke of “the shock that there’s a kid who seems to grow up in the shadow of the Muslim community and yet chooses a path of extremism and violence that nobody taught them in the community. It’s a betrayal of the community.”
So we are to believe that the Muslims who are — by their own account — most fervent and devout are adhering to a form of Islam that is completely foreign to the Islam taught in their local mosques, and that they grew up hearing. What a strange phenomenon! Yet no one seems in the least curious about how it came to be.
As for the fear of “revenge,” this hardly ever materializes, and yet is the constant preoccupation of the mainstream media after every jihad attack. Notice that the New York Times doesn’t ask the people at the Islamic Society of Greater Chattanooga or anywhere else what programs that have in place or are instituting in order to make sure that there won’t be any more young misunderstanders of Islam like Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez. The assumption that he must have learned his violent Islam somewhere other than inside the mosque he attended is taken for granted by the Paper of Record, without investigation or even a single question.
“At a Mosque, Grief Mixes With Fear of Revenge,” by Richard Fausset and Laurie Goodstein, New York Times, July 17, 2015:
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — Just beyond a massive strip mall, with its Best Buy and Hobby Lobby, Abdul Baasit, the imam at the Islamic Society of Greater Chattanooga, found himself preaching on Friday about a nightmare.
It was Eid al-Fitr, at the end of Ramadan, normally a time of gift-giving and carnival celebration. But the party that had been planned was canceled: A man who had attended prayer services at the center’s mosque killed four Marines on Thursday. And Mr. Baasit, 48, was trying to help Chattanooga’s Muslim faithful cope with their grief over the deaths, and their fear of reprisal.
“You do not want what is not right to be associated with Islam,” Mr. Baasit, a native of Ghana, said in lilting, heavily accented English. “And yet it is happening.”…
Nashville’s Muslim population, for example, has swelled in recent years with an influx of Kurdish and Somali refugees. The Muslim population in Chattanooga is smaller but well established and diverse, made up of first- and second-generation immigrants and African-Americans, said Daoud Abudiab, president of the Islamic Center of Columbia, Tenn., about 45 miles south of Nashville, who is active in interfaith relations throughout the state.
That growth — especially the arrival of immigrants and refugees — has led to a backlash in some quarters, and Tennessee has become a hotbed of anti-Islam activity. The center that Mr. Abudiab helped to found was burned to the ground in 2008, the debris found etched with swastikas and racist graffiti. Three members of a white supremacist movement known as Christian Identity were given prison sentences.
Opposition to a mosque expansion project in Murfreesboro grew so heated that construction vehicles on the property were set on fire, and the mosque members faced years of legal wrangling over zoning restrictions in local government. Then the Tennessee General Assembly took up legislation in 2011 that sought to outlaw the practice of Shariah, or Islamic law, making it punishable by 15 years in jail.
On Friday, Ossama Bahloul, the imam of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, said the attack in Chattanooga “was shocking to everyone” because Mr. Abdulazeez seemed so American, having grown up and gone to school in Tennessee.
He said he was horrified by the shooting. “Four Marines serving the country, to be killed like that,” he said. “It is despicable.”
But Dr. Bahloul also said he was worried about what it could mean for all Muslims in the region. “People become upset, and they react,” he said.
Other Muslim leaders echoed that sentiment, describing Friday Prayer and events that combined the usual holiday fare with warnings about Islamic extremism.
Ihsan Bagby, an associate professor of Islamic studies at the University of Kentucky, said that at his mosque in Lexington on Friday, the person giving the sermon talked about what had happened in Chattanooga and the growing threat of radicalization.
“I’m sure comments like that were made throughout mosques in America,” he said. “Just the shock that there’s a kid who seems to grow up in the shadow of the Muslim community and yet chooses a path of extremism and violence that nobody taught them in the community. It’s a betrayal of the community.”
Mr. Abudiab, head of the Islamic Center in Columbia, said he also found the shooting in Chattanooga shocking. “He seemed to be your average all-American young man with a bright future,” he said of Mr. Abdulazeez. “So that’s where the shock lies.”…
At Friday Prayer, some members said they were indeed nervous that the shooting could provoke bad feelings.
Mustapha Coulibaly, 36, a native of Ivory Coast, said that some non-Muslims in Tennessee were still upset about the backlash against the Confederate flag. And now this.
Mr. Coulibaly said he was concerned about retaliation, adding, “We know we have a lot of people not being happy.”…