By now our readers know the essential story of what happened in Chattanooga today – a 24-year old Kuwaiti national who may or may not have been a naturalized U.S. citizen named Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez went on a shooting spree at a pair of military installations in that city. He hit an Armed Forces Career Center, blasting away with some 25-30 rounds through the window while sitting in his car, and wounded a sailor – it’s a miracle nobody was killed. Then Abdulazeez made off for a Naval Reserve Training Center several miles away and killed four Marines in the parking lot before getting in a shootout with the police that ended in his death.
We’re not going to do a whole lot of fancy blogging about this. I just have six quick thoughts…
1. Abdulazeez was a Kuwaiti born in 1990. That means four members of the U.S. military were killed by someone whose home country was saved from Saddam Hussein in the year he was born by the U.S. military. The shocking ingratitude of that can’t be ignored, and there isn’t a whole lot anybody can say in the defense of the culture which spawned this brat.
2. A prediction: we’re going to find out that the shooter was a member in good standing of the local mosque, and the people in charge of that mosque will express “shock” and “dismay” and “revulsion” (well, that didn’t take long at all) that he would do this, and we’ll hear that the mosque absolutely does not preach the jihad. In the meantime, we now know that local Muslims in Chattanooga went ballistic over the fact that someone from that town had been arrested by the FBI for plotting to commit violence against Islamberg, a Muslim enclave in upstate New York suspected of all kinds of scary things. And we’ll also hear that he had legitimate grievances from having experienced “racism” and “bigotry” from local yokels while he was growing up in a backward Southern place like Chattanooga (well, that didn’t take long, either).
3. Another prediction: Bill Killian, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Tennessee, who refused to divulge Abdulazeez’ identity during the major press conference following the massacre, will end up in deep, hot water before all this is over. Killian, as it turns out, was connected to one of the founders of the local mosque and even gave a keynote speech at the grand opening of the mosque. Given that, and the potential connections coming out of this thing, it’s going to look very sketchy for Killian and the rest of the suits speaking at that presser not to have ID’ed the shooter when they clearly had his name.
It was interesting that less than a half-hour after that press conference Abdulazeez’ name was leaked by law enforcement to the media. It’s almost as if the cops on the ground were pissed off by the fact that the suits wouldn’t give any information out about who he was, and endeavored to put a stop to that inhibition of disclosure. I’m not alleging a conspiracy here, but we’ve already seen over and over again that when jihadists explode and kill Americans the federal and even local governments will treat obvious cases of Islamic terrorism as though they were radioactive rather than acknowledge what is patently obvious and do the obvious steps.
4. Speaking of obvious steps, there were no guns to stop Abdulazeez until the police caught up with him. This despite the fact that the bastard hit a pair of military facilities. We already know from Little Rock in 2009 and Ft. Hood the next year, plus the Washington Navy Yard shooting last year, that not having armed personnel on military bases in an age where jihadists will target military facilities here in America with relatively commonplace frequency is unwise. There is no reason recruiting centers or reserve training facilities or military bases should be such soft targets, and it’s not like the Obama administration hasn’t had fair warning on multiple occasions of the threat.
Frankly, this blood is on the president’s hands. He didn’t create the policy of disarming our military personnel when it’s obvious there are enemy agents in our country who have them in their sights, but he’s surely had lots of opportunities to revisit and remedy it – and he chose not to. To leave our military people, who by definition we trust with a weapon, without the ability to protect themselves is unconscionable. Heads ought to roll for this, and Obama ought to be made to offer a personal apology to our troops for his despicable inaction.
5. Get ready for the Muslim PR offensive. CAIR already ran out a typical pablum statement about how Islam is peaceful and they’re distraught over this attack, though there was no offer to help find out where the jihadist message that radicalized this kid came from and stamp it out.
And quite curiously, we found ourselves on the receiving end of a press release that came in out of the blue as this story was unfolding. Somehow, I just didn’t take this as a coincidence…
Expert Debunks 5 Misconceptions in North America about Muslims
Good afternoon, Scott-
Toronto-based Dr. Saqib Qureshi, divergent strategist, political and religious intellectual and educator, is debunking the 5 most common misconceptions in North America about Muslims.
In fact, his new book, Reconstructing Strategy introduces new opportunities and ways of thinking that might provide positive solutions for individuals, businesses and political leaders when it comes to identity—from personal to business to religious. With a penchant for Disney’s Toy Story movie, the author even references Buzz Lightyear’s sense of self in the same paragraph about Mohammad’s everlasting spiritual authority. The highly-original book uses subjects such as politics, pop culture, economics, sociology, psychology, philosophy, history, literature, and health to help shed light on the lack of intellectually-driven modern strategy, brands and misconceptions in a balanced and constructive way.
Please let me know if you’d like a copy of Dr. Q’s new book or would like to talk to him about any of the five myths below. Thanks for your time and consideration.
Best,
Kristi Hughes
Expert Debunks 5 Misconceptions in North America about Muslims
5 Misconceptions in North America about Muslims
Dr. Saqib Qureshi
1 – They are something outside of us, they’re not part of us:
Muslims have lived in the US and Canada since before either country achieved national independence. The first Muslim presence in what is now the US dates to 1528, and in what is now Canada, to 1854. Muslims are not only the fourth largest religious community in the US and the second largest in Canada, but their contribution to their respective countries has been integral to the development of the national consciousness through the likes of Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X.
2 – Muslims are more violent than are other communities…
Listing the world’s countries by homicides per capita, you’d find no Muslim country in the top 20. The highest ranked country is Nigeria, ranked 25th at 20.0 per 100,000. The world’s most populous Muslim country, Indonesia, has a homicide per capita rate of 0.6 per 100,000 which compares to 4.7 in the US and 1.6 in Canada. And in any case, most criminal offences in North America are by perpetrators who are a bit tipsy, with about a third of all violent crimes being alcohol related. For those who don’t know, very, very few Muslims drink alcohol since the faith prohibits it.
3 – OK…. but then most Muslims are terrorists, right?
In North American society, media and politics, a “terrorist” is defined as somebody who commits a violent crime, which is politically or ideologically motivated and who professes a Muslim self-identity. The de facto use of ‘terrorist’ in North America is for Muslims alone. Tim McVeigh wasn’t labeled a terrorist. Nor was Anders Breivik. And hey, Dylann Roof who massacred nine church-goers in Charleston as part of a broader effort to precipitate a race was wasn’t labeled a terrorist either. The only time North American politicians and media folk use the word “terrorist” is for a Muslim.
4 – OK … but then Islam is associated with violence and terror, right?
Besides the fact that the Qur’an repeatedly stresses that the only legitimate use of violence is for self-defense, and that Mohammed only ever fought his three battles self-defense, Islam is not associated with any of the most barbaric atrocities in human history. In fact, some of the worst atrocities in human history have been done in Christianity’s name. The genocide of Native Americans saw some fifty million deaths, while Hitler’s Nazi Germany killed some seventeen million. Both invoked Christianity … yes they did, both fought in the name of Christianity!
5 – How about Jihad? How about Holy War? What about that then?
‘Jihad’ as used in the Qur’an refers to ‘sustained effort’, more broadly to do “good” and prevent evil. It has absolutely no association with violence. It is merely the act of trying to do the right thing, unlike how the Western media have used it. And Islam has no concept of Holy War. In fact, no war is holy in Islam, though the only wars that are sanctioned are those for self-defense and only until the aggressor party has stopped its aggression, at which point war becomes illegal. The very first Holy Wars were undertaken by the Catholic Church against the multi-ethnic and multi-religious community of Jerusalem … the Crusades which began in 1095 and ended in 1291.
Dr. Saqib Qureshi is a divergent strategist who looks at things a little differently. He writes intellectual and thought provoking articles on Reconstructing Strategy and received his PhD from the London School of Economics. Dr. Q has lived in Europe, Asia and North America and has worked for McKinsey & Co., HSBC Investment Bank and several governments. He was the first person to appear on British television to raise concerns about Muslim extremists in the West and the failure of western culture to properly understand the Muslim community. His new book, Reconstructing Strategy: Dancing with the Objectivity God, will be available in late June 2015.
6. The suits at the Chattanooga press conference said there was no warning of an attack. That isn’t true, because an ISIS Twitter account dropped a message this morning telling “American dogs” that “You will see wonders” in Chattanooga. Shortly thereafter came Abdulazeez’ rampage. There will no doubt be a lot of attention focused on that confluence of events, particularly in light of the fact that something nearly identical happened just before two jihadist animals descended on the arena in Garland, Texas where a “Draw Muhammad” contest organized by Pam Geller was taking place.
There were even some media reports that Abdulazeez had lived in Phoenix recently, though those might have been inaccurate. If he did live there, and if he did attend that mosque in Phoenix where the Garland shooters attended, things could get really interesting – particularly given the Twitter warning that might well have been a “go” signal. If you’ll remember, after the Garland massacre attempt, in which the jihadist attackers were killed by police before they could slaughter anybody, a large group of people who were called “bigots” and “Islamophobes” descended on the mosque to protest radical Islam. They did so because that mosque has a tradition of spawning terrorists, and if this guy turns out to have been another alumnus it would validate that protest. In fact, there might need to be a whole lot more protests at mosques so as to put pressure on them to do more to eliminate jihad in America if they’re not going to be eliminated themselves.
After all, when Dylann Roof shot up a black church in Charleston, killing nine, the politically correct crowd made a universal demand for an end of the Confederate battle flag as a cultural symbol even to the point of absurdity, so much so that they’re digging up Nathan Bedford Forrest’s bones in Memphis and trying bulldoze Lee Circle in New Orleans. If that’s a legitimate reaction, why wouldn’t all the mosques in the country have to be shut down in the wake of this and lots of other jihadist attacks?
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