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Sudden jihad?
So far, there's no way to tell for certain what made Sulejman Talovic start shooting up a mall in Salt Lake City this past Monday. Talovic, 18, killed five people and injured nine before he was shot dead by police.FBI agent Patrick Kiernan said there was no known reason to think Talovic, a Muslim immigrant from Bosnia, was motivated by religious extremism, i.e., was committing a terrorist act.But whatever his motives were, what Talovic committed was in fact an act of terrorism. He shot innocent civilians with the obvious intent of inspiring terror. The question of why he did it may never be answered satisfactorily, since Talovic is dead. His family claims to be totally dumfounded. "We're Muslims but we are not terrorists," his aunt said. Neighbors described him as a loner who typically dressed in black. The police say there's nothing to tie Talovic to terrorist organizations like al-Qaeda. But it sure looks like another case of what Daniel Pipes, founder and director of the Middle East Forum, calls "Sudden Jihad Syndrome." In an article published March 14, 2006 on www.frontpagemag.com, Pipes cited an incident in which Iranian immigrant Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar drove an SUV into a crowd of people, injuring nine of them. Taheri-azar had just graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He was his high school student council president. An acquaintance said he was "kind and gentle, rather than aggressive and violent," though the university chancellor said Taheri-azar was "a loner." After his arrest, Taheri-azar told the courts that he was "thankful for the opportunity to spread the will of Allah." He said he had acted to "punish the government of the United States for their actions around the world," and "to avenge the deaths of Muslims around the world." He'd been planning his jihad for more than two years. Pipes says that Taheri-azar "represents the ultimate Islamist nightmare: a seemingly well-adjusted Muslim whose religion inspires him, out of the blue, to murder non-Muslims." There have been several similar incidents. A couple examples: Last August an Afghani Muslim killed one person and injured 14 more as he drove through San Francisco, deliberating hitting pedestrians on sidewalks and in crosswalks. He said he was a terrorist. Last July a Muslim entered the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle, announced that he was a Muslim American and "I'm angry at Israel," and opened fire, killing a woman and injuring five others. The police often don't tag such incidents as acts of terrorism because there's no discernible association with al-Qaeda. But that connection is not really necessary. There is plenty of encouragement for jihad being preached in many mosques, as well as on the Internet. It doesn't take an organization to plot the sort of personal jihads being carried out by these individuals, though it's possible that Talovic (if he really was one of them) had assistance. He somehow came up with an illegal handgun. If Pipes is correct, and "sudden jihad" is a syndrome, we can expect to see more of these attacks. Nobody wants to suspect his Muslim neighbor or fellow student or co-worker of plotting terrorism, and of course most of the time it's not the case. But it remains a fact that jihad is being preached and taught to Muslims the world over. All it takes is a disaffected young man looking for a mission, and it can happen. Until Muslims as a whole decide to reject violent jihad and adopt peaceful ways of spreading their beliefs, it will continue to happen. Posted by: ryuge 2007-02-17 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=180688 |