By Chuck Hustmyre
(Continued)
An American Jihad?
Daniel Pipes, professor, Middle East expert, award-winning columnist, and director of the Middle East Forum, coined the phrase Sudden Jihad Syndrome. Pipes identifies men like Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, who tried to murder nine students at the University of North Carolina in the name of Allah, as part of a widespread pattern of Muslims who lead quiet lives before turning to terrorism.
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| Daniel Pipes |
"Mr. Taheri-azar represents the ultimate Islamist nightmare," Pipes wrote, "a seemingly well-adjusted Muslim whose religion inspires him, out of the blue, to murder non-Muslims."
Robert Spencer, the director of Jihad Watch and the author of two best-selling books about Islamic jihad, said lone terrorists like the ones cited above share the same ideology as Osama bin Laden. "They are not members of his organization, and they are going about what they do in different ways, but the ideology is the same," Spencer told Crime Library.
"What unifies (them), and possibly this guy in Salt Lake City also, is this ideology that Muslims must wage war against unbelievers in order to help establish the hegemony of Islamic law over them. Terrorism is one weapon in that struggle."
Spencer said he is not surprised that the FBI is quick to try to disassociate these seemingly random acts of violence with terrorism.
"It seems to be a prevailing assumption among law enforcement that these guys can't be terrorists if they're not members of a terrorist group," Spencer said. "I think that's a false assumption. There doesn't have to be any organizational link; there's an ideological link."
The media are quick to follow law enforcement's lead in cases of lone jihadists, Spencer said, because they are afraid of inciting a backlash against innocent Muslims. "I think that shows a low opinion of the American people," he said.
American Muslim advocacy groups also put enormous pressure on the American media to not associate individual acts of violence with terrorism, Spencer said. He added that media outlets are also afraid of being labeled racist or bigoted and downplay or discredit claims linking these acts with Islamic terrorism.
Because Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar and others like him act alone and without instruction, their individual acts of terror are nearly impossible to predict. What needs to change is their mindset, according to Spencer.
"If a young man can read the Quran and decide that it means he has to kill people, which we saw in North Carolina, by the man's own words," Spencer said, "then every mosque in the country ought to have a program showing this is not the way to read the Quran."
The fact that there is no such widespread program to counter the jihadist ideology is a matter of "criminal neglect," Spencer added.
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