A Plague of Lone Muslim Gunmen - Because None Dare Call It Terrorism

"Why does terrorism prosper because none dare call it Terrorism"

Wednesday a Muslim by the name of Omeed Aziz Popal ran over 14 people, killing 1, and striking 2 people in front of the Jewish Community Center in San Francisco. He ran over one senior citizen in a crosswalk and then tried to run him over again, before a bystander pushed him out of the way. When he was finally stopped by police, he identified himself to witnesses as a terrorist. However the press and law enforcement quickly rushed to inform us that the shooter was upset over personal problems and has a history of mental problems and that the attacks can't possibly have anything to do with terrorism. At the scene the suspect was described as showing no emotion.

This very same August another Muslim, Naveed Afzal Haq had opened fire at the Seattle offices of the Jewish Federation and Community Center declaring he was angry at Jews and Israel. He killed Pam Waechter and shot a number of women there gaining entrace by using a 14 year old girl as a hostage. The shooting came a day after Hezbollah leaders and Al Queda had called on Muslims to carry the war against Israel to the US and Haq's father was a founding member of the Islamic Centre of Tri-Cities in Richland, which is an arm of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) which is run by Saudi Arabia meaning that the Haq family was tied to the same Wahhabi clerics who back Al Queda. Police nevertheless described Haq as a lone gunman and claimed he had a history of mental problems and that the attacks have nothing to do with any larger terrorist organization.

In March in North Carolina A Muslim student named Mohammed Taheri-azar drove around in another SUV hitting 9 people on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus. He wrote in a letter the following, "My attack on Americans at UNC-CH March 3, was in retaliation for similar attacks orchestrated by the U.S. government on my fellow followers of Allah in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and other Islamic territories." Fellow students reported that he had turned suddenly religious a year before. A month earlier Muslim students had angrily protested the publication of the Mohammed cartoons in a UNC student newspaper, the Daily Tar-Heel. Law enforcement assured everyone that Tahreri-Azar was acting on his own. Officials and the university quickly ruled out the attacks as terrorism.

At the end of last year Arizona student Ali Warrayat, a Palestinian Muslim, drove blaring Arabic music directly through the front doors of a Home Depot. He had originally wanted to wear a Palestinian flag but instead brought with him a copy of the Koran. He slammed his car into a display of flammable goods and used a lighter to ignite them touching off explosions. When arrested he refused to answer in English demanding he be addressed in Arabic. Authorities he was merely a dissatisfied employee going on a rampage and no terrorism was involved.

And there's a long list of similar stories that stretches back through the years, sudden violent attacks by Muslims, dismissed as lone gunmen, as mentally unstable, as upset over something, wanted revenge for personal slights and were acting alone despite clear Islamic and terrorist overtones to their actions and statements like Abu Kamal who opened fire on the Empire State Building killing 7 and leaving behind a note attacking America, Israel and England. The media and police dismissed any political motives labeling him as yet another dissatisfied man upset about 'things.'

The prototype for this sort of blindness goes back to 2002 an Egyptian named Hesham Hadayet opened fire in the LA airport in front of the El-Al ticket counter killing two El Al employees and wounding four others before El Al's chief security officer shot him dead. Hadayet had brought with him two guns and a knife. Neighbors said Hadayet had become outraged by a large American flag put up after 9/11. The FBI and the Mayor quickly assured everyone that it was an isolated incident with no connection to terrorism.

The media and police stated that he had been upset because his buisness and marriage were failing. Explanations were advanced that Hadayet was just a dissatisfied buisnessman looking for revenge. Governor Gray Davis said the incident was sad but urged Californians not to stop their Independence Day Celebrations, "Please continue on with your celebrations," he was quoted as saying. A year later the FBI and Justice Department quietly concluded that the attacks fit the profile of terrorism.

In 1990 Rabbi Meir Kahane was assasinated by another Muslim gunman named El Sayyid Nosair, like several on this list, an engineer. Dozens of bombmaking pamphlets were found in his New Jersey apartment and tapes of Sheikh Abdel Rahman threatening "High World Buildings." Nosair was a member of a terrorist cell led by Sheikh Abdel Rahman whose followers eventually bombed the World Trade Center in 1993. The weapon used to kill Rabbi Kahane came from the terrorist who would eventually be convicted of conspiring to kill Americans in the 1998 US Embassy bombings. Prior to this Nosair had attempted to assasinate Premier Gorbachev and bombed a Greenwich Village gay bar.

None of this came out after Nosair's arrest or at his trial to whose defense Osama Bin Laden contributed $20,000. He was never charged with conspiracy. Two of the future perpetrators of the World Trade Center bombing, Mahmud Abouhalima and Mohammed Salameh were arrested in his apartment that night and then released. Investigators described him as a lone nut. Nosair's Lawyers claimed that he had been set up and wasn't guilty of anything. Despite the fact that he had killed Rabbi Kahane in the middle of a crowded room, held a cabbie at gunpoint and then shot a postal police officer who returned firing bringing down Nosair, the jury refused to convict Nosair of the murder and only convicted of assault on the cabbie and officer and assorted weapons charges. Years later after the World Trade Center was bombed, the Nosair case was reopened and he was convicted of both the murder and participation in the plot to bomb the World Trade Center... but by then it was too late.

In the very notebooks seized by the FBI Nosair had written, "breaking and destruction of the enemies of Allah. And this is by means of destroying exploding, the structure of their civilized pillars such as the touristic infrastructure which they are proud of and their high world buildings which they are proud of and their statues which they endear and the buildings which gather their head[s,] their leaders, and without any announcement for our responsibility of Muslims for what had been done."

Instead of listening the media and law enforcement wrote him off a lone nut, as they have written off so many Muslim killers, in part because of Political Correctness, in part because it was convenient and made the cases simpler, in part because their ramblings seemed insane to investigators who failed to realize that the ramblings of Osama Bin Laden are equally insane. And so the murders continue and the murderers are shuffled off to prison, dismissed as minor and unimportant and the terrorism goes on.

"Why does terrorism prosper because none dare call it Terrorism"