Jewish Federation Shooter Recently Baptized

The (take your pick) mentally ill individual/evil Muslim terrorist who shot six at the Seattle Jewish Federation, killing one, recently converted to Christianity, according to a Seattle Post-Intelligencer report.

Naveed Haq, now widely portrayed as a Muslim American so angry at Israel that he shot up a Jewish charity in Seattle, had recently converted to Christianity. His conversion is perhaps the most startling contradiction in a puzzling life.

Clearly, this proves that Christians hate America and that there is an organized effort to kill Jews among Christians and that Haq was part of it. Sure, sure–most Christians don’t murder Jews. But many do. There’s a long history of Jew-hating Christians going way back, from the earliest days of the church right up to Mel Gibson. And now this.

Either that, or this is just a tragic crime committed by a mentally ill person. That was my original take on this but, the more I read on the conservative blogs, the more wrong I knew I must be.

Of course, the SPI story could be wrong, in which case it would prove that the press is aligned with the terrorists and confirm that Haq was indeed a Muslim terrorist–probably very high in the al Qaeda hierarchy. Perhaps even the 13th 9/11 hijacker.

UPDATE: Michelle Malkin is upset with the “moonbats” pointing to this story (hat tip: Florida Masochist). She notes that she linked to an earlier SPI story over the weekend which also included the fact that Haq “attended the Islamic Center of Tri-Cities mosque two weeks ago.”

She also points to a Wikipedia piece on Taqiyya (which may or may not rhyme with “Reconquista”): “In Shi’a Islamic tradition, Taqiyya (التقية – ‘fear, guard against’)[1] is the dispensation allowing Muslims to conceal their faith when under threat, persecution or compulsion.” The implication that he was baptised to avoid being murdered or persecuted strikes me, to say the least, as implausible. It’s much more likely that Haq was a very confused young man trying to sort through that confusion.

More interestingly, Malkin points to a new statement from the Seattle police which indicates that Taq apparently planned his crime quite well. That’s not particularly surprising–it was carried out with sufficient precision that prior planning was evident. Still, it would seem to vitiate any claims that Taq simply “snapped” and seized a target of opportunity. This was a premediated attempt at mass murder, regardless of whether Taq was mentally stable.

Malkin’s Hot Air colleague Bryan Preston adds, “The guy identified himself as a Muslim when he opened fire and used that identification to justify his actions, actions which find justification in the Koran but not in the New Testament.” Centuries of people persecuted in the name of Christianity might disagree with the second part of that statement. That he “identified himself as a Muslim” at the time of the shooting is indeed relevant and perhaps a sign that the baptism didn’t “take.” (As if attempted mass murder weren’t sufficient.)

Regular readers of the site–including those who read my first post on this case–know that I believe radical Islamist teaching is much more widespread than a simple lunatic fringe. Islam has not undergone the modernist transformation that Christianity went through centuries ago with the Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Reformation. The amount of organized violence committed by non-fringe Christian groups pales in comparison to that committed by Islamists.

Still, I don’t see a terrorist hiding under every tree. It is simultaneously true that we have an “Islamist problem” and that most Muslims–even most Muslim murderers–are not part of it. And when a guy with a history of mental illness, whose previous criminal history is limited to whipping out his private parts in public, kills someone, my first response is not “I wonder what religion he follows?”

UPDATE: Some parallels to the Mel Gibson case occur to me. Both had crazy dads who raised them in the ways of a crackpot religious sects. Taq has a “history of mental illness” whereas Gibson had a history of alcoholism. Both have some rather strong antipathy toward the Jews. That Taq decided to buy guns and kill Jews while Gibson merely got drunk and spouted some nonsense strikes me as having much more to do with what kind of men they are than which church they attended.

________
Previously:

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James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. Anderson says:

    Ah, so *that* explains it ….

  2. Fersboo says:

    He started attending a Bible study group 8 months ago and got baptized, then stopped attending a few months after the baptism. According to the article, he also expressed interest to learn more about Mormons.

    Makes since to me James. Nope, no Islamic extremism here. Haq doesn’t fit any kind of profile. He must be just a lone nut who got hold of a gun. No one, not even his father who founded a Islamic Center, would take advantage of a confused individual and suggest he kill.

  3. James Joyner says:

    Fersboo: So, one is only a Christian if one has attended church services in the last couple of months? I thought if you were baptised, you were a Christian forever more?

  4. DC Loser says:

    That definition of Christian only applies to people who causes embarrassment to their religion.

  5. legion says:

    Obviously, we’re _all_ terrorists now.

  6. Fersboo says:

    You are right James, I am a paragon of the Baptist denomination regardless of the fact that I have attend church no more than 3 or 4 times a year over the last 10+ years. Abortion practioners beware! And now I guess Jews must beware also. I wonder if Mel Gibson, now that we have condemned him as a Jew-hating Catholic (or whatever denomination he is), will go on a rampage and start killing Jews, claiming to be a Muslim-American, angry at what Isreal is doing in Lebannon. Will we just say that he is a drunkard as an excuse?

  7. James Joyner says:

    Fersboo: It’s debatable, of course, but the vast majority of Muslims would argue that terrorists are in violation of Muslim teachings and are apostate.

    Now, of course, there are more Muslim leaders than Christian ones these days who support violence against non-believers. While there are terrorist groups and radicals among both faiths, there are proportionately vastly more among the Muslims. Regardless, however, that doesn’t change the fact that most Muslims (and Christians) who kill are not part of an organized radical movement but merely lone nuts and/or evildoers.

  8. LJD says:

    Regardless, however, that doesn’t change the fact that most Muslims (and Christians) who kill are not part of an organized radical movement but merely lone nuts and/or evildoers.

    I guess that depends if you are talking about Muslim and Christian Americans, or those elsewhere on the globe. Would you really equate violent extremism on this scale to ‘lone’ nuts or evil doers?

  9. James Joyner says:

    LJD: Probably everywhere but certainly in the U.S. Aside from hotspots like Iraq and Lebanon, I’d posit the strong guess that most murders committed by Muslims in the Middle East are just like murders committed in the United States: ordinary crime largely unconnected to any political or organized crime group.

  10. Bithead says:

    The issue here, however is not groups, in the orginized sense.

    The problem, as I’ve been saying, is radicalised Islam.

    Here under discussion, we have someone who clearly is disaffected… a drifter. He decided, for whatever reason to take the anger building up in him and channel it through an identification to Islam.

    Not all that different a situation to the OKC bombing, for example, insofar as the ‘disaffected drifter

  11. Bithead says:

    sigh…
    Clearly, something’s screwy with comments. Truncated my post.

  12. James Joyner says:

    Bithead: I don’t have any disagreement with you that there is a problem with radicalized Islam, including the various Saudi-funded madrassahs and mosques in this country. That doesn’t preclude the possibility of particular nutcases being mere nutcases.

  13. Common Cents says:

    If he was a Christian why did the

  14. Citizen Duck says:

    How odd then, that according to all accounts I’ve seen to date (often quoting eyewitnesses to the incident), the shooter identified himself as a Muslim angry with Israeli policies as he went about his business in the Jewish Federation Center.

    But don’t let that inconvenient little fact dissuade you. By all means, let the snark continue!

  15. Ivan Lenin says:

    What James Joyner chooses to ignore is that the guy is a result – or victim, if you prefer – of Islamic indoctrination. The problem is not any political group or

  16. Fersboo says:

    Maybe we will find out that Haq actually isn’t of Pakistani descent at all. Maybe he is descending from Normans. Anything.but.muslim.

    Good to see that the Bullwinkle Blog and Radley are getting so much enjoyment out of the

  17. RadCap says:

    The problem is: when identifying a terrorist – be he acting on his own initiative or with some collective – how does one identify the supposed ‘sane’ terrorist from a so-called ‘nut’. ‘Sane’ terrorist would appear to be something of a contradiction in terms. ‘Sane’ – by what standard?

  18. Fersboo says:

    My previous post was cut in half. I will refrain from posting until you say this is resolved James.

  19. Ron Coleman says:

    Christians — the worst kind of Muslims!

  20. LJD says:

    Let’s not pull this too far to either extreme.

    This particular case was clearly a nutjob, whose affiliation to any religion seemed to change with the wind.

    The fact that he acted at the time in the name of Islam may be irrelevant. We may yet find out that his conversion to christianity was based on the odds his screwy mind put on begin ‘forgiven’.

    Although I would argue that terrorists in general are not totally ‘sane’ by our standards, I would differentiate between theirs and ‘common’ criminal acts. There is a clear, organized global extremist movement. These people are not limited to the middle east, and they are not just whack-os looking for solace in Islam.

  21. Jim Robinson says:

    The bottom line is that our media is justifying the concept that it is OK to hate Israel forever because of the current action. Take a look at CNN’s reporting on the dead human shields in Qana.

    Eight years ago, Clinton bombed Serbia for 78 days and we now have a democratic, peaceful Serbia where the people generally like Americans and don’t really hold a grudge. CNN wasn’t reporting back then that the Serbians SHOULD ever hold a grudge.

    There is a responsibility in wartime for the media not to egg young people of either side on to hate and hold a grudge. This young man, if he were cheering for Hezbollah, needed to have sat down in front of the Internet and read http://angryarab.blogspot.com or some other Hezzi Cheerleading website…and follow the action.

    Noone should be egged on by CNN to become part of the action.

    Most Muslims are watching this with enthusiasm. They are taking this like they took the World Cup. The meme is that Hezbollah is holding the IDF at the border and kicked Israeli soldiers out of Bint Jabael. That is what the need to think: that they are winning, so they can get high self esteem for being on the

  22. Sterling says:

    I suppose it hasn’t occurred to you that maybe he was planning to kill Christians, first? The guy infiltrated a Jewish center and shot five people – who’s to say he didn’t mean to infiltrate a Christian group last year, but then got cold feet?

    The problem isn’t that there are more or less mentally ill people in Islam than in Christian or post-Christian societies, it’s that the Quran gives mentally ill people a bad program. Mentally ill Christians typically stand on street corners with sandwich boards predicting the end of the world. Mentally ill Muslims seem more inclined to commandeer commercial airliners and try to engineer the end of the world. See the difference?

  23. TallDave says:

    but the vast majority of Muslims would argue that terrorists are in violation of Muslim teachings and are apostate

    Not true. The majority perhaps, but not the vast majority. Certainly not a majority the size of those who would feel that way in Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity or Judaism.

    There are a large number of mullahs in Islam who are intent on seizing power by creating murderous, intolerant religious armies, and they suffer relatively little condemnation/ostracization from their fellows, much less than in other major religions. We can debate why or how this phenomenon came to be, but not the fact of its existence.

  24. James Joyner says:

    Sterling: I don’t disagree with you in the main. There are plenty of violent acts committed in the name of Christianity, to be sure, but it’s now mostly fringe sects that espouse such violence. That wasn’t always the case, of course. Most Christians, though, are Westerners and the West has gone through radical modernization over the last several hundred years (the Enlightenment, Renaissance, and Reformation, most notably) in a way the Muslim world has not.

  25. Bithead says:

    James; No, not at all, it does not.
    However there seems an identification issue that I want to more fully explore when I get time and your bugs are dealt with.

  26. bryan says:

    Being baptized doesn’t make one a Christian in and of itself. Baptism is an outward symbol of an inner change, and the change isn’t always sincere or longlasting. Since you base part of your argument on that misunderstanding James, the rest of your thinking has fatal cracks. The SPI is making a similar mistake, taking a momentary flirtation with Christianity on Haq’s part to have been an actual conversion that changed his whole life. it obviously didn’t. At best, he seems to have been a “seeker” looking for something to believe in.

    The biggest tell with Haq wrt to his faith is what he said before he opened fire: “I am a Muslim American.” His flirtation with Christianity obviously didn’t take.

  27. James Joyner says:

    Bryan: The things one has to do to be “Christian” varies according to one’s faith, apparently. Some require mere saying that one believes Christ is one’s savior, others believe Baptism is necessary, others believe good works are necessary. I’m quite literally agnostic on the issue.

    By your definition, though, no one who commits murder is actually a Christian and therefore the faith is always blameless. That’s a pretty good trick. Too bad it’s not one available to Muslims.

  28. EFG says:

    The biggest tell with Haq wrt to his faith is what he said before he opened fire: “I am a Muslim American.”

    Absolutely right.

  29. sunrise says:

    He is severly bipolar and has been on meds in the past. His friends and relatives have interviewed that they saw changes recently, no doubt because he stopped the meds. The religion angle is secondary to his extreme mental defect. You are ascribing rational motive to an unrational person with a resulting irrelevant argument of religious intolerance.

    This guy isn’t the poster child you need to make your points about Muslim vs Christian.

  30. RadCap says:

    JJ: Indeed Islam does not have the mixing of faith and reason which Christianity went through via Aquinas. It is still a very fundamental mysticism and thus, by nature, prone to violence – since, when one abandons (or never embraces) reason, one is left with only force as the means of human interaction. In this respect, Islam is actually more consistent to its epistemological (and therefore moral) principles than Christianity (or most other established religions). Of course that makes it a much more dangerous practice than the rest as well – dangerous to those who wish to live free.

  31. bryan says:

    Not at all, James. All I’m saying–and don’t try and stretch it further than what I actually said as you did in your response to me–is that being baptized doesn’t make one a Christian all by itself. If he had walked into that office and said “I’m an Episcopalean American and I am angry at Israel” and opened fire, you’d have a case to make. But he didn’t, so you don’t.

  32. John says:

    To paraphrase Freud, “Sometimes a nutcase is just a nutcase.”

    I wonder when Abe Foxman will say that the Seattle killer’s actions when unmedicated reveal his true feelings in the same was as Mel Gibson’s actions when unmedicated/overalcoholized (is that a word? it is now).

    I agree with Mr. Joyner’s implied point that the piling on on Islam is excessive, but when you look at the words actually in the koran, you gotta wonder. There’s none of that kill’em all talk in the New Testament – whether to include the Old Testament in the Bible was controversial for several hundred years after the founding of Christianity for just the reasons that people say the Bible is as “bad” as the koran.

  33. Wouldn’t that be the 20th (21st?) hijacker?

    Anyway, there’s a long line of people-hating people of one type hating people of another type that goes way, way back, before the earliest days of his church, whatever the hell it is, or any other church. Let’s face it: people just hate each other. Always have, always will. They’ll find any excuse: different culture, different color, religion, language, roots for a different hockey team, whatever. Remember that song from South Pacific, “You’ve Got To Be Taught.” No you don’t. It comes naturally. I’m gettin’ used to it. Most people never do.

  34. This is very interesting, but there is a part of me that believes it is sincere and true.

    –RC of strangeculture.blogspot.com

  35. bryan says:

    Find a verse in the NT that justifies persecution, James. See how easy/hard it is.

    Then pick up a Koran and find a verse justifying persecution of non-Muslims. See how easy/hard it is.

    Too many people on the religious sidelines assume parallelism between the two faiths, and too many assume that a Reformation-like experience for Islam will moderate it. But there’s a major problem with that: The two faiths are based on very different views of God, mankind and the world. The Reformation brought Christianity closer to its founding text and further from the corrupted teachings of the medieval Church. Christianity became more grace-based and less violent over time as a result of its refined understanding of what the Bible actually teaches. A similar Islamic Reformation is taking place right now–taking Islam closer to its original text, the Koran. And bringing with it sharia law, the spread of jihad, and making it more violent.

    We’re in the middle of the Islamic Reformation. And Islam isn’t moderating, nor will it.

  36. Oh, and did somebody mention Abe Foxman? That reminds me. I have no was of ascertaining this, but I would be willing to bet serious cash that an effective truth syrum, if it were ever invented, could reveal that he hates the goyim almost as much as Gibson hates the Jews. I mean, Jews are among America’s most educated, affluent groups in American society no? Their fellow citizens have elected them as their representatives in Congress in proportions far greater than their percentage of the population at large, so it’s a tough argument to make that America is a big ol’ hotbed of Antisemitism. But this guy walks around with this big chip on his shoulder. He find something new to bitch about every damn day. Yeah, I know you get the occassional headcase shooting up a synagogue or an El Al counter at LAX, but, hey, on the whole, it beats being raised in the not-so-nice parts of the Bronx, I’ll betcha. He’s a big bore.

  37. Bithead says:

    Let’s see if this makes it through; I posted this at my place, as I thought about it.
    >

    The total picture being painted by the article that James links shows one of the more dangerous aspects of radical Islam, and frankly, other anger driven groups. The picture includes references to someone who has never really stuck to anything in his life, including his newfound Christanity. Such a person will, often as not, latch onto soemthing/anything just for the sake of being identified as being SOEMTHING. He would as easily ahve been a Nazi, or latched onto the “World Bank” protestors that blew through Seattle a few years ago, or any one of a dozen other far left groups.

    As it was, his cultural background eventually took over, and he lacking direction at anything, he lashed himself to the more radical aspects of the religion of his birth. But why would he latch himself to anything of the like? For two things he didn’t have;

    * Identity

    Clearly, here’s someone who still didn’t know who he wanted to be when he grew up. Along comes a radicalized version of the religion of his (distant) father, with ties to the culture of his birth. And all that anger he’s been feeling for so long has what he now considers a proper outlet. Pop a few jews, and all’s right with Allah.

    * Power;

    Certainly when one has a number of people in terror of them, one holds a certain amount of power. In this case, more than he’s ever held previously. Nobody’s ever really paid attention to him, before. But NOW….

    Not all that different a scenario to what we were given of the OKC bombers, really.

    And certainly the crime committed was terrorism, and decidedly was and is connected with the Islamic terrorism we’re all watching, world-wide.

    I say yet again:

    ….the problem is far larger than Usama BinLaden and his followers, the Iranian Imams, and any other sub-group within the Islamic world that you’d care to name. If we’re going to win this thing, and win we must, it will not happen ignoring this main point. We must be prepared to fight the main problem; radicalized Islam.

  38. James Joyner says:

    Bryan:

    A fair point, I think. While there are many NT passages that have been used to justify violence against non-believers–indeed, Christians of the wrong kind–I agree that Christ was a pacifist while Muhammad was a violent conquerer. I’d say the NT was a big improvement over the OT whereas the Koran took it further down its violent path.

  39. PD Shaw says:

    Regardless of whether baptism is essential to various Christian denominations, the sacrament is for purification, intended to cleanse away sin. In radical Islam, one may escape the consequences of sin by an act of jihad, particularly if one dies in the process. There is a common thread of desire suggested by these events, a wish for absolution or fear of eternal damnation.

  40. MikeT says:

    James,

    Take your own admission about the concept of Taqqiya a step further. How do you know this man is actually insane, rather than conniving and evil? My understanding of Taqqiya is that it extends to deceiving infidels for the purposes of Jihad. With that in mind, it doesn’t take much effort to connect the dots. It’s all about blurring the lines. If he can whip up additional anti-Christian hysteria among the Jewish, something that is demonstrably easy to do time and again, his attack does two hits for the price of one: dead Jews and animosity between two infidel factions.

    WRT your definition of a Christian, it’s very simple. Follow the Nicene Creed. Any member of the spiritual catholic body of believers accepts this. If anyone rejects it, they are not a believer, regardless of denomination. The ancient catholic church accepted it, the churchs that follow in the ancient tradition such as the Presbyterians do as well.

  41. jake says:

    Sorry man.

    This is utterly stupid. The guy declared he was a Muslim and that he was angry about US action against Muslims in Iraq.

    What more convincing does a reasonable person need?

  42. infidel4life says:

    the vast majority of Muslims would argue that terrorists are in violation of Muslim teachings and are apostate.

    Oh really?

    Then why aren’t the ‘vast majority of muslims’ openly denouncing acts of terror committed by muslims in the name of Islam? All I hear is their perpetual outrage against the infidels.

  43. MikeT says:

    James,

    The Old Testament only seems harsh if you consider it outside of the context of the whole Bible. The New Testament is actually no nicer than the Old Testament. The same Jesus who preached forgiveness, also preached repentence as the only way to be forgiven and said that anyone who rejected his teachings was condemned before his father–aka the God of Israel (or the Old Testament if you prefer). He was also the same “moral teacher” who said that he didn’t come to bring peace, but to bring a sword and to set people against one another for the sake of righteousness.

    Like it or not, but Jesus didn’t actually really change the fundamentals of the Old Testament. All he did was establish a new dynamic to them through grace. People who think he was a great, hippy-style loving new age, “tolerant” guru would do well to read his warning that he is God when he said “before Abraham was, I am” and “if you have seen me, you have seen my Father.” I am, is English for Yaw’eh, which is the common Hebrew name for the God of Israel.

  44. Gregg says:

    It doesn’t surprise me that you’re so anxious not to see a pattern here. In Sweden and Norway and places like that they’re still anxious not to see a pattern in the soaring number of rapes they’re experiencing. In France they’re anxious not to see a pattern in all the car burnings. In Canada they’re anxious not to see a pattern in what kinds of people tend to get together to plot blowing up buildings and beheading government officials. In Britain they’re anxious not to see a pattern in forced marriages and female genital mutilation.

    Look, the guy said who he was and why he did it. So did the guy who tried to run people over at the college. The Qu’ran supports what these guys did. Frankly, I think you should be even more concerned about this than about the “obvious” terrorists. It presages a general rise in anti-Semitic violence and terror emanating from the U.S.’ growing Muslim population. We can acknowlede this and take steps to confront the problem now, or we can wait until it becomes commonplace and expected (much as abuse and lynching of blacks was in the South up until the early 1960’s).

    But nah, it’s easier to just explain it all away.

  45. Dave E says:

    Sterling-
    Maybe Taq found out that Christians are more likely to return fire.

  46. megapotamus says:

    It may well be so that the “vast majority” of Muslims would argue that the terrorists are in flagrant violation of their stated beliefs… except that they don’t. They, at the least, acquiesce and look the other way from the “radicals” (hey, it depends on their market share, no?) preaching in storefront mosques from Toronto to Kirkwood to Leeds, not to mention Kirkuk and Kuala Lampur. If this CAN be reasonably pinned on the Islamists; not quite at Malvo levels of precision… good on yer.

  47. Dr. Chaos says:

    MikeT:
    that’s true for the Jesus of the gospels of Mark and Matthew, the so-called Jewish gospels. But then in Luke, we get the kinder and gentler Jesus that the Catholic church emphasizes and most non-Christians think of when they think of Jesus. Then in John, we get the evangenical Jesus who talks of almost nothing else but “believe in me and be saved”, which is the message that the Baptists emphasize. People choose to pay attention to or ignore the various gospels according to what they like and what point they want to make. The Koran, OTOH, is one book by one guy, not four books by four different people. (I’m not even going to get into the Old Testament). And even so, there are many contradictions in the Koran(since Mo was just making it up as he went along, he must have gotten confused and couldn’t keep his story straight), so they had to have this concept of abrogation, where the latest “recitations” abrogated the earlier ones. Bad luck for the world that the latest ones are the most violent and intolerant passages.

  48. RiverCocytus says:

    Well, James, if you want to really know what makes a Christian a Christian, you would need to read the New Testament in its entirety for yourself. Modern forms of Christianity differ on what they stress as important in conversion; but all will agree that belief in Christ is not determined by a ritual or act, but is internal. The rite is supposed to be an outward sign of an inward change, but it is not taken for granted that it is. Doing as he has done is a clear sign that he is not a changed man.

    I dislike the insanity defense, simply because we enter the area of defining sanity– which allows enough flexibility for political manipulation. Gibson? Not insane. Haq? Mentally unstable. I like the way Gibson put it– though he was acting insanely, (or may have been insane at the time) he still has to take responsibility for his actions. That’s personal responsibility. Such slanderous and dispicable statements deserve condemnation.

    Haq claims to have, as a Muslim American, have been angry at the USA’s policy regarding Israel, and as a result, shot and killed people (Jews, even.) Unlike Gibson, who condemned his own actions, Haq appears to have been silent on the evil he committed.

    Would be nice to see CAIR speak against this despicable act he committed against his fellow citizens? It won’t happen.

    I dislike national hyphenizations… I don’t say I’m a Christian-American. I’ll say I’m an American, and I’ll say I’m a Christian, but not a hypenization or juxtaposition which implies with greatest of strength: I’m both a Christian and American– and I won’t say which I really hold my allegience to.

    Politically and Nationally, I’m an American. I hold no other allegience.

    But my eternal soul belongs to God. Its a tough balance, one that Haq, as a Muslim (or so he claimed) was unable to find.

    But knowing the way the ball rolls in the MSM one can almost say with certainty that this will be hailed as evidence that this action had no relation to global, distributed jihad.

    But, I don’t know everything either way, so it really is just speculation.

  49. Tom says:

    With regard to the theory of the lone, solitary, mentally ill muslim attacking others, don’t worry; it will soon become a standing joke. It may take 10, or 20 more shootings by ‘lone, mentally ill muslims’ but eventually the media will have to call it what it is.

    You only become a racist if you are taught to be one….Haq was taught well. And his father works in a nuclear facility outside of Seattle.

    That should help you to sleep better tonight.

  50. Bithead says:

    Tom;

    the point you’re missing here, is that when push came to shove he finally went to his roots if you will. Only, the most anger adopting part of his cultural roots that he could find. Radical Islam.

    That connection can not be so lightly dismissed. Not if solving the issue is on the agenda.

    Understand me clearly; I am not placing the blame for what he did on all followers of Islam. What I am suggesting is that because the more radical version of it is allowed to exist this empty soul latched onto it as the salvation for his trouble.

    That said, there is a great deal of validity in the ideas expressed by Fers, that the media seems over eager to separate this young man from that cultural decision, and from the words he spoke prior to pulling the trigger. I wonder; if they would be so forgiving were the targets abortionists and the shooters claiming to be angry Christians.

  51. Lyle says:

    If the PI printed it-you know it is false. Our resident expert in Seattle (Michael Medved) has reported that this scum bag was a practicing christian and recently became a muslim.

  52. Anderson says:

    Hm. Wotta thread.

    I suppose the self-proclaimed Christians who murder abortion doctors don’t prove that Christianity is a religion of murder. Because, hey, that’s different.

    “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” That’s “all,” as in Muslims, Jews, Christians, atheists, etc. Those “Christians” eager to point the finger at Muslims, need to be looking at themselves instead.

  53. Ozzie says:

    Yeah, I know you get the occassional headcase shooting up a synagogue or an El Al counter at LAX, but, hey, on the whole, it beats being raised in the not-so-nice parts of the Bronx, I’ll betcha. He’s a big bore.

    Tell that to the family members who lost their loved ones to psychotic Egyptians at LAX or mentally disturbed Pakistanis.

    Try explaining to your children about why someone tried to burn down their synagogue.

    Better yet, try explaining why here in America to go to synagogue requires going through a metal detector and passing a host of guards.

    Yawp!

  54. Bithead says:

    I suppose the self-proclaimed Christians who murder abortion doctors don’t prove that Christianity is a religion of murder. Because, hey, that’s different.

    As someone else pointed up, Anderson… calls to violence are far easier to find in the Koran, than about any other mainline religion in the world today.