Ohio State Attack:
What Did We Learn?
Lt. Colonel James G.
Zumwalt, USMC (Ret.) December 12, 2016 Accuracy In Media
In endeavoring to identify
a scintilla of logic related to events emerging from the Ohio State
University attack in which Somali refugee Abdul Razak Ali Artan,
18, tried to kill pedestrians, first attempting mass slaughter by
running over them with his car and then by jumping out to attack
them with a butcher knife purchased for this purpose, a thread of
logic emerges. To best discern it, one need consider the
following:
1 According to his
own Facebook entry, Artan acted out of anger his fellow Muslims
were being killed in Buddhist-majority Burma, writing, “I can’t
take it anymore.” So, since fellow Muslims were dying at the hands
of Buddhists, Artan felt compelled to kill Americans.
2 Former Republican
presidential candidate and Ohio Gov. John Kasich proferred, despite
Artan’s declaration, “We may never totally find out why this person
did what they did or why they snapped … we may never find
out.”
3 While several
victims were wounded during the attack, the only reason none was
killed was the quick action of a campus police officer who shot
Artan dead before he could inflict any fatalities. Yet, despite her
son’s murderous rampage, Artan’s mother, just before her son’s
funeral, lamented he had been killed “for no reason.”
4 Despite the Muslim
attacker’s declared motivation for his actions, despite a
declaration by ISIS he was acting in the name of his religion and
despite an established track record of Muslims attacking
non-Muslims, both in the U.S. and Europe, the White House urges us
not to “increase our suspicion of people who practice a particular
religion.” Accordingly, President Barack Obama refused to link
Artan’s acts to radical Islam.
For anyone unable to grasp
the common thread of logic in all this, it is the following: No one
has used it to link Artan’s terrorist attack to Islam!
We can actually take this
lack of logic further.
After the attack, Fox news
correspondent Tucker Carlson interviewed Georgetown University’s
Muslim professor Engy Abdelkader, asking her how one goes “from
refugee to ISIS sympathizer in two years.” As a college professor
and as a Muslim, Abdelkader’s answer was not surprising:
Islamophobes are a driving force behind terrorism.
As Carlson queried whether
a peaceful Muslim community should do some soul-searching on the
issue, the professor would have none of it. Again, unsurprisingly,
she sought to take the spotlight off Islam, claiming the
anti-Muslim bias known as Islamophobia causes Muslims to suffer
“cultural homelessness” so that they do not identify with their
host country. Furthermore, she suggested, the greater terrorist
threat was not posed by Muslims but by “white supremist groups and
right-wing extremists.”
As Carlson disputed a
terrorist threat Abdelkader falsely offered as fact – pointing out
we have “had an awful lot of Americans killed and injured by
Islamic terror in the last eight years” – and, thus, whether it was
unfair to blame Artan’s violence on his victims, the professor
responded, “Absolutely not!”
She credited the majority
of Muslims as not only being peaceful but also contributing to
society in a positive manner. When pressed by Carlson on whether
there might be issues of violence within the Muslim community, the
professor adamantly rejected such thoughts.
All of Abdelkader’s
responses to Carlson’s questions were clearly designed to hold
Islam blameless. They also were offered in accordance with Islam’s
age-old principle of imposing a duty upon Muslims, known as
“taqiyya,” to lie to non-Muslims on behalf of Allah in order to
further Islam’s advance.
There are certain realities
and facts, however, the professor simply cannot ignore about
“peaceful” Islam:
Why are the world’s 27 most
violent cities, experiencing the worst quality of life, all
dominated by Islam?
Why do Muslims who
criticize Christianity not have to live in fear for their lives
while non-Muslims daring to criticize Islam do? A list of the
latter includes the likes of Somali and former Muslim Ayaan Hirsi
Ali, British Indian novelist Salman Rushdie, Danish cartoonist
Fleming Rose, who drew Muhammad, and the Netherlands’ Geert
Wilders.
Why did a Moroccan
television program on women’s beauty aides feel it necessary to air
a segment on how best to hide domestic-violence bruises?
Why, as Abelkader claims,
if Muslim Americans are the group most responsible for reporting
tips to law enforcement about terrorist plots, is that not a
telling indictment against her community that so many such plots
are being hatched there?
A refrain from a song
written by English singer Steven Patrick Morrissey repeatedly
laments, “I’ll never learn.” In the wake of yet another terrorist
attack by a Muslim in the U.S. and our continuing reluctance to
link the attacker to his religious motivation, Morrissey’s refrain
seems most appropriate.