Once again we see the connection between devout observance of Islam and jihad mass murder plotting. The denial is universal among our authorities, but the connection is unmistakable.
“Ahmad Khan Rahami: Wounded suspect ‘way more religious’ after Afghan trip,” by Matt Kwong, CBC News, September 20, 2016:
Ahmad Khan Rahami, the 28-year-old suspect “directly linked” by police to New York and New Jersey bomb plots and now charged with five counts of attempted murder of a law enforcement officer, appeared to spend his days rather innocuously.
When he wasn’t preoccupied with his hobby car tune-ups and modifications, neighbours say, he was often lending a hand at the family business — a small fried-chicken eatery below their Elizabeth, N.J., apartment where Rahami worked the fry stations, goofed on his younger teen brother Aziz and squabbled with customers over petty change.
Rahami was a car freak, with a penchant for imports, say people who frequented First American Fried Chicken on Elmora Avenue. Sometimes he would do early-morning food delivery runs in a white Infiniti, or rumble around in an old but sporty-looking coupe that sounded like it could use a muffler.
“He’d be driving his little two-door cars with the little pizza,” says Enoch Ojo, 26, who lives five houses down from the chicken joint and would often have Rahami deliver wings, pizza and soda to his door.
“You know those people who be driving those beat-up looking race cars? He likes those loud cars.”…
Rahami was not on terror watch lists. But patrons of the restaurant where he worked and family friends reportedly remarked on a change that took hold of him over the last four years, starting when he began travelling to Afghanistan.
The Rahami family is Muslim, but neighbours said they never thought of Rahami as particularly devout. But that changed when he returned from a trip to Afghanistan four years ago, a childhood friend, Flee Jones, told Reuters.
“He was way more religious,” Jones said.
Rahami also reportedly grew his beard out and began wearing more traditional Muslim clothing around that time….