George Rebane
The San Bernardino massacre investigation continues. Given the evidence to date, the authorities still cannot decide whether it was just ‘workplace violence’ or the latest attack by Islamic terrorists. What is reported by the news services – Associated Press, WSJ, … – is pretty compelling (more here). We do know that –
1. The two shooters were Muslims – Syed Farook, a native born American citizen, and Tashfeen Malik, the immigrant wife of Farook and the mother of their 6-month old child.
2. Farook had travelled to Saudi Arabia last year from where he returned with Malik.
3. Upon his return he grew a beard as do many newly devout Muslim men.
4. He worked for San Berdoo county as a restaurant inspector, was a model citizen, and had no criminal record.
5. Before their 2dec15 attack at a county facility where a holiday party was in progress, the couple had made extensive preparations for acts of terror at their home which included pipe bombs, IEDs, radio controlled vehicles besides obtaining the full combat gear which they wore during their killing spree. Earlier that day they gave their baby into the care of relatives.
6. Authorities on the scene stated that Farook and Malik were definitely executing a “planned mission”. Given the preparations, there was no evidence of spontaneity in their attack.
There will undoubtedly be more and the story is still developing. But what I want to cover here is that again we have an atrocious act of terror carried out by formerly normal people who worked, were raising a family, blended in admirably, and gave no evidence of anything aberrant before they acted. In hindsight, the only attribute that connected them to such previous attacks is that the couple were practicing Muslims.
A Bayesian would take a look at the evidence and rationally conclude that yes, given the recent history of radical Islam and jihad, and the tenets of their faith, this couple would have a higher probability of being terrorists in waiting as they finally demonstrated to the world. (For those who disagree, the Bayesian would be compelled to change his mind given evidence that religious belief was not a supportive/determinant factor.)
From the worldview which apparently guided Farook and Malik and so many Muslims today, is that these terrorists were courageous, self-sacrificing soldiers acting for and with the blessings of Allah. They were prepared to die and die they did in the service of their faith. In that worldview they were not cowards or miscreants but model mujahedeen serving as exemplars to their fellow believers in the spread of Islam.
And to execute their plan they practiced taqiya to perfection. Students of Islam and readers of these pages know that taqiyya or taqiya (q.v.) is the scripturally sanctioned practice of dissimulation and other forms of perfidy including the denial of one’s faith that is allowed Muslims if such practice may serve to promote the greater goals of Islam. All such surprise attacks by Muslims living among us here and overseas are launched subsequent to successful preludes of taqiya. Where in other belief systems such practice of ambush and shattering of the social contract would be considered abhorrent, in the world of radical Islam it is a much admired and condoned facet of selfless martyrdom.
The real problem that taqiya presents to America and the west is in how should we deport ourselves with our Muslim neighbors. To continue normal social life in our land we must presume that the large fraction of Muslims among us would never practice taqiya and lay in wait for an opportunity to kill us and ours (polls to the contrary notwithstanding). Yet every time one of their co-religionists perpetrates such an abhorrent act, it gives all non-Muslims pause as they review their relations with their Muslim friends and neighbors. And that exactly is the aim of the jihadists. They want to disrupt our social order, and they want to cast suspicion on their brethren living with us so as to compel them to opt for ‘their own kind’ as they drive the wedge they have created ever deeper between Islam and the world of the Kafir (q.v.).
I don’t see any ready solution to this growing schism between our civilizations save prompt, unfailing, strenuous, loud, and large scale demonstrations by moderate Muslims during which they denounce such acts of terror. They cannot remain silent in the face of such killings, and they cannot shelter those of their own who preach violence against the west. In sum, they cannot ask us to trust them more than they trust us, for that we have already done. Contrary to the pabulum spewed by progressives, taqiya is an enduring problem which yields to no simple solution.
[4dec15 update] Taqiya on steroids indeed. This morning’s report from the Associated Press underlines the question posed by this commentary.
With a young wife, infant daughter and government job, Syed Farook appeared to have arrived at a sweet spot in life. Friends knew the 28-year-old by his quick smile, his devotion to Islam and his earnest talk about cars he would restore.
With such neighbors, who among us would or could suspect the worst from these snakes in the grass who lye in wait for an opportunity to strike? One of the main functions of a common culture is the efficiency it provides in organizing the practicing society – social intercourse is made more facile and productive when you can reliably predict the behavior of those whom you befriend or do business. Their obvious display of a common culture (or social contract) lets us focus on matters at hand that progress our relationship rather than proceed in a wary manner that may even come down to an existential and reasonable fear for our personal safety.
Humans and animals share the same instinct in that regard. When we encounter a situation with another critter capable of harming us and whose behavior we cannot reliably predict, we do one of three things – we distance ourselves from the potential threat, e.g. flee; we bolster our ability to counteract the threat, e.g. we arm ourselves; or we pre-emptively attempt to neutralize the threat, e.g. incapacitate or kill it. What we don’t do is conduct business as usual pretending that the risk to our own person and those in our care doesn’t exist. Critters who didn’t successfully follow that instinct soon became extinct.
Today we are in a quandary that is exacerbated by our progressive betters. Any discussion such as found on these pages about Islamic terrorism is proscribed, and the discussants vilified as some social cretins or lower forms of life. The proffered wisdom is for us to continue playing the odds with members of a group that has and continues to spawn so much violence based on a fundamental hatred of our civilization and way of life. The appeal to reason here is that their bad guys make up such a small fraction of their population (there are about 3M Muslims in the US), that we shouldn’t worry about incidents like the San Berdoo massacre. (The Left then doubles down by again renewing their perennial assault on the Second Amendment in order to disarm law-abiding citizens, as if that mattered in reducing the Islamist terror threat. But that is another agenda and story.)
A counter reasonable argument is to do everything to reduce the size of the suspect Muslim population to an identifiable cohort that has a higher likelihood of sourcing an attack on us. And yes, that means that we would need to (gasp!) discriminate and bring special resources to bear to vet our Muslim neighbors in their communications, travels, and also in their mosques. As argued here before, our Muslim neighbors would do themselves and us a great good if they volubly protested the terror acts of their jihadists, and moreover if they exposed such jihadists in waiting/training who live and hide among them. That would provide the rest with visible evidence that ‘moderate Islam’ exists with motives and means to purge itself of elements that mean harm to all of us.
To date we have seen no such evidence. It has been days since Mr and Mrs Farood murdered and maimed, and all we are talking about with the Muslim leaders is how we should take care not to paint all America’s Muslims as potential terrorists, while the example of the Faroods and so many before them call out for something much more proactive in countering Islamic terror. Are there really no discernible attributes that can differentiate the high risk cohort among Muslims? Can travel to countries where radical Islamic organizations headquarter or rule be a viable discriminant? Most certainly evidence, such as contact with and/or pledging loyalty to organizations such the much underestimated ISIS, should be a useful and used discriminant to identify higher risk individuals. But asking America to continue swimming in shark infested waters with nothing but the comfort of unknown statistics on our side will not help relations between the Muslim communities and their non-Muslim neighbors.
Finally, I again draw attention to the fact that taqiya and its obvious successful practice here and abroad is a proscribed topic for us to examine and discuss. Yet it is Islam's scripturally sanctioned practice of taqiya, unique in the annals of today’s religious observances, that lays their moral foundation for unsuspected terror.
The bottom line is that institutionally we no longer have defenses against such assaults. Christianity in decline has long ceased to be a belief system in the west that can defend itself. And our newly strident socialist principals and principles in government call for America’s fundamental transformation, which now advocate our shrinking from Islam’s advance as the means to bring us to a global power peerage in preparation for a new world order. And none of this is a conspiratorial undertaking, it is all happening in the open for all to see who need only look.
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