Sudden Jihad Syndrome
jose
By Daniel Pipes
FrontPageMagazine.com | March 14, 2006
"Individual Islamists may appear law-abiding and reasonable, but they
are part of a totalitarian movement, and as such, all must be
considered potential killers." I wrote those words days after 9/11
and have been criticized for them ever since. But an incident on March
3 at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill suggests I did not
go far enough.
That was when a just-graduated student named Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar,
22, and an Iranian immigrant, drove a sport utility vehicle into a
crowded pedestrian zone. He struck nine people but, fortunately, none
were severely injured.
Until his would-be murderous rampage, Taheri-azar, a philosophy and
psychology major, had an apparently normal existence and promising
future. In high school, he had been student council president and a
member of the National Honor Society. A number of UNC students told the
Los Angeles Times that he "was a serious student, shy but
friendly." One fellow student, Brian Copeland, "was impressed with
his knowledge of classical Western thought, adding "He was kind and
gentle, rather than aggressive and violent." The university
chancellor, James Moeser, called him a good student, if "totally a
loner, introverted and into himself."
In fact, no one who knew him said a bad word about him, which is
important, for it signals that he is not some low-life, not homicidal,
not psychotic, but a conscientious student and amiable person. Which
raises the obvious question: why would a regular person try to kill a
random assortment of students? Taheri-azar's post-arrest remarks
offer some clues.
He told the 911 dispatcher that he wanted to "punish the government
of the United States for their actions around the world."
He explained to a detective that "people all over the world are being
killed in war and now it is the people in the United States['] turn
to be killed."
He said he acted to "avenge the deaths of Muslims around the
world."
He portrayed his actions as "an eye for an eye."
A police affidavit notes that "Taheri-azar repeatedly said that the
United States Government had been killing his people across the sea and
that he decided to attack."
He told a judge, "I'm thankful you're here to give me this trial
and to learn more about the will of Allah."
In brief, Taheri-azar represents the ultimate Islamist nightmare: a
seemingly well-adjusted Muslim whose religion inspires him, out of the
blue, to murder non-Muslims. Taheri-azar acknowledged planning his
jihad for over two years, or during his university sojourn. It's not
hard to imagine how his ideas developed, given the coherence of
Islamist ideology, its immense reach (including a Muslim Student
Association at UNC), and its resonance among many Muslims.
Were Taheri-azar unique in his surreptitious adoption of radical Islam,
one could ignore his case, but he fits into a widespread pattern of
Muslims who lead quiet lives before turning to terrorism. Their number
includes the 9/11 hijackers, the London transport bombers, and Maher
Hawash, the Intel engineer arrested before he could join the Taliban in
Afghanistan.
Mohammed Ali Alayed, the Saudi living in Houston fits, the pattern
because he stabbed and murdered Ariel Sellouk, a Jewish man who was his
one-time friend. So do some converts to Islam; who suspected Muriel
Degauque, a 38-year-old Belgian woman, would turn up in Iraq as a
suicide bomber throwing herself against an American military base?
This is what I have dubbed the Sudden Jihad Syndrome, whereby
normal-appearing Muslims abruptly become violent. It has the awful but
legitimate consequence of casting suspicion on all Muslims. Who knows
whence the next jihadi? How can one be confident a law-abiding Muslim
will not suddenly erupt in a homicidal rage? Yes, of course, their
numbers are very small, but they are disproportionately much higher
than among non-Muslims.
This syndrome helps explain the fear of Islam and mistrust of Muslims
that polls have shown on the rise since 9/11.
The Muslim response of denouncing these views as bias, as the "new
anti-Semitism," or "Islamophobia" is as baseless as accusing
anti-Nazis of "Germanophobia" or anti-Communists of
"Russophobia." Instead of presenting themselves as victims, Muslims
should address this fear by developing a moderate, modern, and
good-neighborly version of Islam that rejects radical Islam, jihad, and
the subordination of "infidels."