By Chuck Hustmyre

(Continued)

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A Pattern of Jihad?

In 2006, WorldTribune.com and other media outlets reported that some militant Islamic Web sites were offering a book containing a section titled Guide for Individual Jihad. According to those reports, the guide offers advice to lone terrorists about how to kill their enemies. Techniques include poisoning, drug overdoses, shooting, arson, and running people down with cars.

In August 2006, 29-year-old Omeed Aziz Popla, a Muslim from Afghanistan, mowed down 14 people with his black Honda SUV during a 20-minute kamikaze-style attack in San Francisco before police cornered and arrested him. One victim, whom Popla ran over earlier in the day, died.

A witness told a television news crew that moments after police took Popla into custody he referred to himself as a terrorist. By that evening's news broadcasts, however, police pronounced that the attacks were not an act of terrorism.

The next day, Popal told police: "I planned to kill those people I ran over last night. They needed to be killed."

In July 2006, Naveed Afzal Haq, a 30-year-old Muslim man burst into the two-story Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle carrying two pistols. He shot six women and killed one. During the attack he said, "I am a Muslim American, angry at Israel."

The day after the shooting, FBI counterterrorism expert David Gomez said: "We believe it's a lone individual acting out his antagonism. There is nothing to indicate that it's terrorism-related."

In March 2006, Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, a 22-year-old student from Iran, intentionally plowed his rented 2006 Jeep Cherokee through a crowded pedestrian mall at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, injuring nine.

After the attack, Taheri-azar said he did it to punish the United States for its actions around the world. He also told reporters he intended to kill everyone he hit.

In a series of letters from jail, Taheri-azar explained his motives and claimed the Quran gives Muslims the right to murder those responsible for Muslim deaths. In his letters he did not identify which Muslim deaths the nine people he ran over were responsible for.

In one letter, Taheri-azar wrote, "Due to my religious motivation for the attack, I feel no remorse and am proud to have carried it out in service of and in obedience of Allah."

Authorities denied Taheri-azar's actions were linked to terrorism.

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Contact Chuck Hustmyre at chuck3174@yahoo.com

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