Fundamentalist Islam provides an out for people who are suicidal
I’ve sensed from the start that both the New Orleans car attacker and the Las Vegas truck bomber had one thing very much in common: an impulse to suicide. The latter seems to have carried off his demise without seriously harming anyone else, whether that was his intent or not. But the former clearly wanted to kill as many people as possible – a classic jihadi impulse.
Jabbar, the New Orleans killer, had experienced a sharp downward trajectory in his life:
In a YouTube video he posted in 2020 for his real estate business, a clean-cut Jabbar described himself as a reliable, trustworthy native Texan who spent 10 years in the military, which taught him “the meaning of great service.”
But when he carried out the terror attack — one of the deadliest since 9/11 — Jabbar lived in a squalid trailer park on the outskirts of Houston that is home to mostly Muslim immigrants.
Geese, chickens and sheep roamed freely in Jabbar’s yard when The Post visited hours after the attack. …
He had … been divorced twice, and the failed marriages apparently left him in financial ruin.
It’s logical to think that Jabbar was depressed, and depressed people often turn to religion. That can work out nicely, but with fundamentalist Islam there’s a trap and Jabbar apparently fell into it: justification for murder/suicide as a heroic act which brings enormous rewards in the afterlife. It’s not hard to imagine how seductive such a belief system would be to someone already filled with rage against others as well as shame about how his own life is working out.
That’s apparently what happened with Jabbar:
While the FBI was looking into his “path to radicalization,” evidence collected since the attack showed that Jabbar was “100 percent inspired by ISIS,” said Raia, using an acronym for Islamic State.
Jabbar, who authorities said acted alone, was killed in a shootout with police.
His half-brother, Abdur Jabbar, said in an interview that Jabbar, who had worked for audit firm Deloitte, abandoned Islam in his 20s or 30s, but had recently renewed his faith. …
… [B]oth international and U.S.-based extremist groups follow a similar playbook to draw in new recruits.
The groups use social media to push their message and then move discussions to encrypted app such as Telegram, which could evolve into one-on-one conversations, Snyder said.
“Then people feel like they’re part of a community,” said Snyder, who left DHS in December and joined the race to chair the Democratic National Committee.
Recruits could either receive direct orders or self-radicalize to take action, Snyder said.
Individuals susceptible to recruitment “might have lost their jobs, might have had a mental health crisis, might have just concluded that however hard they’ve tried, they never belong,” said Edmund Fitton-Brown, a former British diplomat who led a U.N. team that monitors Islamic State and al Qaeda.
That last paragraph may sound like an excuse for murderers. However, it’s not. But it’s part of the explanation for what draws susceptible people in.
The conclusion seems backwards. This is how and whom these radical islamist recruit.
Jay Cee:
Not backwards. It’s why they’re susceptible to recruitment.
The Christian idea of martyrdom is mostly passive. The Christian is killed by others because of they refuse to renounce their beliefs or be silent about those beliefs. The Muslim idea of martyrdom is often an active decision, where the Muslim commits martyrdom.
Jon…the Christian martyr is one who willingly engages in self-sacrifice for the sake of others.
Islamic martyrdom, like everything else in Islam, is an act of war against non-Muslims designed to maximize body count and terror.
of course the bigger picture,
https://x.com/bhweingarten/status/1875236684583072137
besides all the ambient noise, of course the bureau let the crime scene be exposed like san bernardino, butthey assure us he is acting alone right
the Houston bureau was busy persecuting dr ethan haim and bringing errant red caps to heal
…abandoned Islam in his 20s or 30s, but had recently renewed his faith. …
This makes me think of Germany’s vehicle-as-a-murder-weapon mass killer. I forgot his name already. I suspect that when a born-into-Islam person rejects that faith for many years and then decides they made a mistake, their reactionary thinking can be quite extreme.
almohsen, he was a curious character like aegyptius, he was a truculent medical student who didn’t finish, yet he was allowed to practice, he had peculiar habits, and he reinvented himself much like the english resident salmadeen, as a true blue patriot,
that event as with nice, and berlin and columbus should have been a wakeup call,
but homeland and main justice, seem to be a ministry of silly walks,
I can’t remember the name of the comic, but he wrote that one day he was feeling despondent and phoned a suicide prevention hotline. He reached a call center in Pakistan and the operator asked him if he could drive a truck.
Don’t forget that Islam is the only religion that actively recruits and grooms suicide bombers. It just does not happen among Christians and Jews. This is a truly black mark against Islam, but all the good people who care turn their heads and refuse to see it. Somehow, when it happens in the US, the Islamic suicides are all loners.
neo rightly states that, “depressed people often turn to religion. That can work out nicely, but with fundamentalist Islam there’s a trap and Jabbar apparently fell into it: justification for murder/suicide as a heroic act which brings enormous rewards in the afterlife.”
Since Islam’s fundamental tenets are utterly and irredeemably antithetical to “life, liberty and (the individual) pursuit of happiness” the solution for depressed Americans being seduced and recruited into Islam is to ban Islam from America. As for religious freedom… Islam is not a religion. It is a violently expansionist, murderous death cult that wraps itself in a facade of religiosity.
Somehow this horrific series of crimes at Rotherdale and elsewhere just came and went, without me paying much attention at the time.
Here’s more on the Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs in the UK, as Elon Musk has brought this subject back into public view.*
And who was the public official, back then, in charge of public prosecutions, who was in the position to decide on whether or not to vigorously investigate these rape gangs and to prosecute the Muslim perps?
Keir Starmer, the current U.K. Prime Minister.
Something–a lot of things–are definitely “rotten in Denmark.”
And here is an indictment of the entire British establishment, which kept quiet on this matter, by the New Culture Forum.**
* See https://www.foxnews.com/world/elon-musk-demands-uk-act-grooming-gang-scandal-amid-growing-calls-probe-national-inquiry-now
* * See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9f9IlNfCXs
*** See also https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/musk-grooming-gang-rotherham-oldham-badenock-b2673483.html
neo:
Great analysis IMO.
People need to find happiness and they need to find meaning. If they can’t find happiness, well, maybe they can find meaning.
Looking for meaning in all the wrong places.
“Islam is not a religion. It is a violently expansionist, murderous death cult that wraps itself in a facade of religiosity.” – Geoffrey Britain
Sums it up precisely.
I’m hardly fond of Islam, but I agree with Kate from a couple days ago, that Islam is still a religion — as well as a raiding party and death cult. 🙂
Islam functions to provide a societal connection to God and rites of passages for life — birth, marriage and death,
What more do you want?
Aside from not requiring everyone else on the planet to submit to Allah as the Koran and Muslims are happy to explain and enforce with violence as necessary.
The trap in defining islam as a “religion” is sprung when they claim Constitutional protections to practise it. Our constitution was meant to allow Biblical religions–which were the only ones recognized by the founders, including Judaism as well as Christianity–freedom of worship. It was never meant to include the curse of islam under its protection. John Quincy Adams got it right. We see what such as expansionistic definition of “religion” has brought about: the “flying spaghetti monster” nonsense is among the more prominent examples.
John+Guilfoyle ,
I was thinking along the lines of Christian Martyrs from ancient Roman times being given the opportunity to sacrifice to Caesar as a god and refused to do so at the cost of their life.
Or the modern Christian given the choice of converting to Islam or even faking it but refuses to renounce Christ and are killed for it. Such as happened in Egypt on a hijacked bus a few years ago.
Somehow this horrific series of crimes at Rotherdale and elsewhere just came and went, without me paying much attention at the time.
The problem is that it came and didn’t go anywhere; that’s part of what is so damning about it. It’s been two decades and, aside from one set of arrests most of a decade back, little to nothing has been done.
Which rather encourages the perpetrators; everybody knows they’re doing it, and nobody stops them. Hardly a recipe that encourages an end.
“Islam functions to provide a societal connection to God and rites of passages for life — birth, marriage and death,
What more do you want?” – huxley
Well…to be honest for one thing…or at least truthful about Islam. The Masons provide precisely what you describe above but assiduously avoid calling themselves a “religion.” They’re a cult too…but that’s another day’s story.
Islam is a warrior ideology that glorifies killing your enemies or dying in the attempt, subjugating and enslaving non-Muslims and lying to achieve those ends. Describing it like a social club with wacky rituals just doesn’t cut it. And I suspect you know that.
The modern West is vulnerable to jihadi (and some other kinds of) subversion and infiltration because it embodies an unworkable cultural ideal: the autonomous individual. Extreme libertarianism is one manifestation of that (note the ‘extreme’ modifier), others include radical feminism and the corporate sector’s desire to reduce customers and employees to fungible atomized elements.
It just doesn’t fit with human nature, ‘the autonomous individual’ fails for the same reason Communism or Esoteric Fascism fails. It doesn’t _work_ for real people, who start as children and inevitably become dependent in old age, who feel a need for emotional connections to other humans and to a functioning society.
Even a century and a half ago, some observers noticed that some white Americans who joined Amerind tribes, even some who were kidnapped into them were reluctant to return. One of the reasons was that sense of connection and community, even in the 19C there was an issue with it. It’s far, far worse today, post 1970s.
Most people, to varying degrees, _need_ that sense of family and community and connection. If one’s own society doesn’t provide it, or, worse, deliberately subverts it, other sources become very tempting. Jihadism is the worst and most dangerous such substitute connection (at least at the moment), but others exist. A lot of why so many highly educated Lefties are so fanatically locked onto their various ‘isms’ is precisely that they’re deriving a sense of self-worth and connection from it. College educated Western secularists are precisely the people most divorced from all sense of tradition and community.
This might also explain why so many liberal females seem to be even more fanatically obsessed than male liberals, because that need for connection and community and family is even stronger in most women than in most men (though men absolutely feel it too).
Jihadism is the opportunistic infection, but the patient was already sick before it arrived.
It’s the theology, stupid. It’s is within most practitioners of Islam depending where they are in their life. You have to do some fancy dancing to get around what the verses say, the surras and the various schools of jurisprudence. I don’t think Islam ever should have been permitted in this country.
As Mark Steyn observed: “There may be moderate Muslims, but there is no moderate Islam.”
Richard Cook wrote “I don’t think Islam ever should have been permitted in this country.”
Same here. I was appalled at the nearly instant “extra” protection given it, after 9/11. (I don’t mean we should allow vigilanteism, but don’t shame us for wanting it out of here.)
And angry with the many who fought to let them build a center very close to the destroyed twin towers.
Then Obama came in & elevated CAIR.
Etc.
Allowing a theocratic group all the American protections of a religion, when its principles are anti-American, anti-Constitutional was/is absurd.
It keeps proving to be a suicidal mistake.
A strong — or sane? — country wouldn’t allow it.
IrishOtter49 on January 4, 2025 at 11:07 am said:
As Mark Steyn observed: “There may be moderate Muslims, but there is no moderate Islam.”
That encapsulates the issue for the West. None of this nonsense about Islamism or “the radical wing of Islam”, or “religion of peace”. But in the final analysis, only the Muslim cultural regions/ people themselves can effect a “converstion”. It is doubtful any change can be obtained from outside beyond killing off 30% of their male populations for 3 or 4 generations in sequence.
There may be violently oriented Jews, Christians, Hindus, Buddists, agnostics, atheists, etc., but their faiths/beliefs are generally benign enough to have very few murderous adherents. They can live and let live – Islam is not defined that way.
[It does have to be admitted that some religions/religious groups are very strongly oriented to evangelism and “in your face” proselytization, so not quite as benign as most of us might like. When you are convinced, you don’t want to take “no” or “wait a minute” for an answer.
HuxleyBob says, “Read the Quran.”
https://www.clearquran.com/
Really.
I think a big problem in the world is that most people have not read the Quran.
It’s not long.
I think our Hostess has hit the nail on the head. There is a commonality here in the case of these two men. They are 1) severely depressed through life failures 2) adherents to Islam. Islam is religion of works, Only your deeds in particular those related to the “5 pillars of Islam” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Pillars_of_Islam) are of import. In addition your situation in life is directly dependent on HOW you are doing. The faithful are rewarded here as well as in the afterlife similar to the heretical Christian “Health And Wealth” gospel. So we have two men who are having extremely hard times and their religion tells them it is their own fault for failing in their religious duties.
But wait! There is an escape clause. Anyone who becomes a Shahid, a martyr to the faith achieves a unique and particularly pleasant welcome to the afterlife. So for folks like these two who see no hope in their earthly future and are already edge suicidal there is joyous resolution (or so they believe) and release from their current pain. Voila yet another would be Shahid is born. Islam is just the gift that keeps on giving.