Researchers: Jihadists No Different From Other Mass Killers
“Omar Mateen has more in common with Dylann Roof than he does with Osama bin Laden.”
9.26.2016
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There’s no difference between run-of-the-mill mass killers and those that credit their killing sprees to Islamic ideologies -- at least according to a few criminologists and professors that spoke to The Washington Post.
These so-called experts believe people like Dahir Adan, the man who went on a knifing spree at a Minnesota mall recently, or Ahmad Khan Rahami, the latest New York City bomber, share similar behavioral traits as other non-Muslim mass killers, even though Adan praised Islam’s god during the attack and asked victims if they were Muslim before stabbing them, and Rahami expressed in his journal an allegiance to ISIS and the desire to become a suicide martyr.
But to Rutgers University criminal justice professor John Cohen, be they jihadists or American mass shooters, they “share common behavioral and psychological characteristics.”
“They’re the same people,” Cohen added.
WaPo writes:
Many studies of mass killers show that they had serious personal or psychological issues, regardless of their motives or religious identity. They bounced from job to job, struggled to find friends or romantic partners, or felt bullied by their peers. Some had traumatic home lives. Others struggled with a profound sense of shame.
University of Alabama criminologist Adam Lankford said, “The attackers themselves act and feel like victims. Various words are use. Persecution. Discrimination. Bullying. Humiliation. Mistreatment. The sense that someone else is picking on me and is out to get me.”
Orlando jihadist Omar Mateen, for example, whom Lankford said “has more in common with Dylan Roof than he does with Osama bin Laden.” Roof, of course, is the white supremacist responsible for killing nine black Christians in Charleston, South Carolina. It's important here to note how gleefully the media was to report Roof's racist ideology as the motivation behind his murder but are less willing to tag a Muslim's Islamic ideology.
Again, WaPo displays its twisted logic:
The landscape has changed since Sept. 11, 2001: The violent jihadist attacking inside the United States today is less likely to be someone trained overseas and more likely to be a disturbed American seizing on an ideology amid a host of personal issues or psychological problems.
The paper points to a New American Foundation report showing 94 people killed in Islamic terror attacks since 9/11 versus “nearly 100” victims of “non-jihadist” mass shootings as proof.
An anonymous senior law enforcement official told the outlet, “We’re not the thought police. So while we aim to be predictive in identifying the threats and how they are going to manifest themselves, we have to be very careful we’re not profiling people based upon their thoughts or utterances — upon First Amendment-protected activity.”
For the rest of the article, the Post explained it had looked at 15 attacks in the U.S. since 2001 that were attributed to Islamist ideology and concluded, “The cases show no obvious pattern of religiosity, mosque attendance or even contact with militant groups. There is no consistent pattern in age, location or ethnic heritage.” That included Fort Hood jihadist Nidal Hasan, Mohammad Abdulazeez, who killed five at several military recruitment offices in Chattanooga, and Alton Nolan, the Oklahoma man who beheaded his co-worker.
From the Post:
Religiosity is often presumed to be the animating theme in cases of Muslims committing mass violence, but it usually isn’t, experts say.The Muslim men who have carried out violent attacks in the United States since 9/11 have ranged from deeply religious to nominally so, or what Hughes calls “converts to ISIS, not Islam.” Some have prayed regularly and performed the hajj pilgrimage. Others abused drugs and alcohol.Omar Mateen professed his allegiance to the Islamic State, but the women Mateen had married didn’t wear headscarves, as the Islamic State would mandate, and former colleagues said he seemed more interested in going to the gym than praying.
As for Dahir Adan, he played Xbox and got good grades, yet, this Somali-American wanted to stab non-Muslims. Meanwhile, WaPo wonders if he “was ever affected by the racial tensions and anti-Muslim harassment that sometimes ripple to the surface in this Mississippi River town.” Again, racism over religion is the preferred conclusion.
“His public Facebook profile contained no jihadist images. He appeared to enjoy soccer. Like many of the other alleged jihadists over the past 15 years, he is now dead. So there will be no confession,” laments the concluding paragraph.
Thus continues the whitewashing of Islamic jihad in America.
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