For god's sake, you don' have to be Robert Pape to know that Islam had nothing to do with it. It was loss of status. It was poverty. Here was poor Faisal Shahzad, the son of a high-ranking Pakistani Air Force Officer, who no doubt got special treas a student for an initial look-see as a "student" in the first place.
And then he went back to Pakistan, only to return to the U.S. and finally obtain that long-sought thing, American citizenship, with that silly Oath of Allegiance those stupid Infidels insist on administering, and he was off to the races, he was in the goldene Medina, oops, wrong immigrants, the goldene Mekka, and nothing could stop him.
Nothing except he was, like so many Muslims, unused to real economic activity, but rather, on gaining money and status from whom he was related to, and in Pakistan he was the son of a relative big-shot. In America he was nobody. He had not learned the virtue of sustained effort, for he had grown up in a society suffused with inshallah-fatalism. He was not someone who could come up with a new idea, no matter how tiny, because bid'a, innovation, is despised in Islam. So he was left, to endure failure. He sent his wife back to Pakistan. His house was foreclosed on. And so -- it doth follow as the night the day -- Faisal Shahzad decided to first get training in Pakistan and return to set off a bomb in Times Square.
Yes, the Robert Papes of this world would have you believe that "if only" Fahsal Shahzad had not had his house foreclosed, he would not have tried to mass-murder Americans. And I have just provided for you a plausible version of this: Poverty Causes Muslim Terrorism. Except it doesn't. Not all Muslim terrorists are like Faisal Shahzad. Why, the last two who made the headlines were not poor at all. One was Umar Abdulmutallab, who was the son of one of the richest (and no doubt most corrupt) bankers in Nigeria. He did not come to America to seek his fortune and find he couldn't make it. He did not step on American soil at all, until the plane he had tried to blow up landed so that Federal agents could take him off. And as for Major Nidal Malik Hasan, he was a great success, wasn't he? He was in the army, as a doctor (albeit one whose superiors were deeply suspicious, even frightened, of, though they felt they could do nothing because he was in a "protected class" -- the class of Muslims, during the "War on Terror" that must never become, as Mayor Bloomberg so memorably put it the other day, an occasion for anti-Muslim bias, for every group, bien entendu, has "a few bad applies." And as an army doctor he was taking in $90,000 a year. Why, even if I were to receive only half that, I wouldn't mass-murder my fellow soldiers. Would you?
And so many of the terrorist leaders are from backgrounds of great privilege, and never did suffer a decline in economic status but, as a result of being "Islamic warriors," gave their lives of privilege greater meaning and acquired for themselves greater status. Osama Bin Laden is no longer one more rich kid of the Bin Laden family, but the world-famous Osama Bin Laden. And Ayman Al-Zawahiri, from a very famous Egyptian family, with a great-uncle who was Azzam Pasha, the first Secretary-General of the Arab League (the same Azzam Pasha who before the Arab armies attacked Israel threatened a "massacre" of the Jews that would be "unlike anything seen since the days of the Mongols") was a doctor, and as Egypt is run by a tiny ruling class, and Ayman Al-Zawahiri part of that class if he wished to be, something else made him become part of Al-Qaeda, and that something else was Islam, for there was no other way for him to express his alienation from the regime, or for that matter, from anything else.
Should the U.S. government now develop a special program of domestic aid for Muslims? Should it make sure that they all succeed, not only economically, but socially and in all other ways? Should it make sure that no Muslims have their houses foreclosed on, that Muslims are always the first hired, and never fired, so that they will never have cause to be sad, or feel in this country that they have lost status or, if they never had it in their countries of origin, enjoy the heady success that they assume should be theirs? Should we never prosecute any Muslims for tax evasion -- even though, at websites run by Muslims for Muslims, one can see casual references to the massive tax evasion of, for example, Pakistani taxi drivers in Canada -- so that no one takes it into his pretty little taxi-driving head to smash his taxi right into a crowd of Infidels waiting for a bus, or standing in line outside a theatre?
Why not? After all, wouldn't this simply be domestically what we have chosen to do in our foreign policy, in Iraq, and Afghanistan, and in Pakistan? In Iraq we have spent (or committed to be spent) two trillion dollars, in order to create what we thought at first might be a Light-Unto-the-Muslim-Nations project. That was then somewhat reduced in its ambitions, and became simply a project to "bring freedom" to "ordinary moms and dads" in the Middle East. It hasn't worked out that way, and it won't, or rather, it will work out, and thus give the Americans the "victory" they sought, only when the Americans leave, and the sectarian resentments rise and rise. But that's another story. The story that counts is that the American government wanted Iraq to be stable, to be prosperous, so that it would not be a "breeding-ground" for terrorists. And the same goes for the sums poured into hopeless Afghanistan, and into endlessly meretricious Pakistan. And that goes for the billions poured as well into all those Muslim countries that forgot to be born with a silver spoon, or rather oil fields. Thus does the American government, along with West Europeans, pour billions into Egypt, Jordan, the "Palestinian" Authority, despite the obvious and continuing corruption, the diversion of funds, and the fact that this money makes not one whit of difference in diminishing hatred for, and cruelty towards, non-Muslims, whether it is Copts in Egypt, or Christians in Gaza or Bethlehem or Jordan, or the very Infidels who sent, and keep sending, the vast sums that keep these peoples and vicious polities afloat, and delay the day when they will have to recognize the connection between their own failures, political and economic and social, and Islam itself.
No, what is clear is something else. That Fahsal Shahzad no doubt -- like a certain Muhammad Atta, who was the son of a middle-class Egyptian family but in Hamburg, living as a student with a bunch of other Muslim students -- endured a decline in status and a failure to meet expectations. But so what?
Are we to ensure the wellbeing of Muslims so that their inculcated hostility toward us does not express itself as terrorism? Really? Shall we, the world's non-Muslims, spend our time worrying about the health and wealth of Muslims, in order that they won't be a threat to us? Shall we keep "nation-buildinig" abroad, and add to that burden being crazily solicitous of Muslims in this country, making sure they all stay happy or at least do not become unhappy enough to engage in you-know-what? Is that why the Obama Administration keeps telling Musliims what deep respect we have for them, how we will always be on their side, how impressed we are – or at least Barack Obama is – with the peace, tolerance, greatness, diversity, and so on and so forth, as was laid out, so memorably – but not in the way Barack Obama and his gleeful speechwriters think – at Cairo in June 2009?
And what did you think of that special meeting, all travel and hotel expenses paid by the long-suffering American taxpayer, for that meeting in Washhington for Muslim businessmen or would-be businessmen, who arrived from abroad for a special meeting, designed to encourage them,, help them make contacts among American businessmen, all to what end? Why should not Hindu and Buddhist and Confucian businessmen be given the same treatment? Or why not poor Christians from, say, Lain America and sub-Saharan Africa, who might want to be invited to Washington, and encouraged, in every way, to make useful contacts among American businessmen? Why do Muslims now get special treatment in this, as they are the objects of colossal spending, or rather squandering, by Infidel governments, and have been, for several decades, but never as much as now, with the colossal follies of Iraq and Afghanistan or rather, that insurance-ad sounding Af-Pak?
Here I shall re-post part of what I wrote about Zacharia Moussaoui ( remember him? Or has he been forgotten, he and his “unhappy childhood”?) at this site:
Lay it all out. Explain that yes, Moussaoui, like a few billion other people, may have had a "deprived" childhood. Yes, he was quick to sense any slight, and yes, he was quick to resent his treatment at the hands of Infidels, because, as a Muslim (one who grew to be more and more faithful and observant) he knew that Muslims should be on top -- not equal, but on top. Infidels lording it over him, or other Muslims, in France, were contra naturam, against the natural and just and right order of things, islamically speaking. The prosecutors should have explained that Moussaoui viewed the world through the prism of Islam, and the texts he read, the society he inhabited (both real, and virtual), taught him to blame, always and everywhere, Infidels.
Eventually this is going to have to be done. Eventually this is going to be unavoidable, if the United States and other Infidel countries are going to continue to use the criminal justice system as it is, and to continue to rely on untrained and inexpert juries who are the products of their age -- with all its sentimentality about mitigating circumstances because, you see, the blame for your behavior can always, always, be found in some part of your background, so that blame can be passed onto, say, one's upbringing.
But this misses the point. There are always people who have had unhappy childhoods, unhappy adolescences, unhappy adulthoods. As noted many times before, we who are Infidels may lose status, a job, a spouse, a girlfriend or boyfriend, or suffer setbacks or perceived slights. Did not Moussaoui think he was entitled to more than he received? Yet his inshallah-fatalism prevented him from simply working hard and doing what he could to overcome, as his brother did, that same background. Why? The answer is that he took Islam far more seriously, was far more of a deep believer, than his brother.
Infidels have a thousand things to blame. They can blame their parents -- just as many on that Infidel jury wanted to blame, for Moussaoui, his treatment by his parents. They can blame their aggressive or unpleasant siblings, their ungrateful children, the System, Racism, The Man, Amerikkka, Kapitalism, Fate, the stars, their cholesterol level, their serotonin level, anything and everything at all -- even, just perhaps, themselves. But Muslim Believers have one thing to blame always at the ready. And to the extent that one takes that belief-system seriously, it is likely that one will, viewing the universe through the grid, the prism, of Islam, blame the Infidel. And that is exactly what Moussaoui did.
Unless this is going to be understood by the usual "experts" -- including those complacent psychiatrists who appear not to have thought it necessary for them to study the doctrines of Islam and what might follow and has naturally followed from them (starting with the perceived behavior of Muslims conducting Jihad over 1350 years, wherever they were able to conduct it because of local conditions or circumstances) -- then there will be more miscarriages, with justice stillborn, the result of those thanatotropic bromides and thalidomides, sentimentality and ignorance.
And what do we conclude? We have two possible conclusions:
1) Moussaoui was and is simply following the tenets of Islam faithfully, and putting into practice the requirement that at least some Muslims must engage in Jihad (in order that others may, temporarily, be relieved of the duty).
OR
2) Moussaoui became depressed, as so many of us do, all over the Infidel world as well, but in the case of Muslims, the problem is that that depression, or any kind of emotional setback, can lead to blaming the Infidel. Viewing the universe through the prism of Islam makes one almost automatically ready to blame that Infidel, and to seek revenge.
Those are the two possible explanations.
And either one has immense implications for the Muslim presence all over Europe and North America. For the sake of the legal and social order and the physical wellbeing of the resident Infidels who created those societies and have no desire to see them islamized, these implications need to be faced.
No doubt Faisal Shahzad -- like a certain Muhammad Atta, who was the son of a middle-class Egyptian family but in Hamburg, living as a student with a bunch of other Muslim students -- endured a decline in status and a failure to meet expectations when he came to America. But so what? So do many non-Muslims, and they do not engage in violent Jihad or, for that matter, in the other forms of Jihad that are less attention-getting, more relentless and widespread and insidious, and thus more effective and more dangerous.
Islam was necessary for Faisal Shahzad to do what he did. And because he was one of those Muslims who takes Islam completely to heart, straight up and not on the rocks, and is willing to participate directly in violent Jihad, and does not understand how there are more effective ways to engage in the “struggle” or Jihad to remove all obstacles to the spread, and then the dominance, of Islam, as others do, including those Muslims who are now expressing their dismay at the damage Fahsal Shahzad done to the “image of Islam.”
My, my. So much solicitude for, and expressed anguish about, the “image of Islam.” And not only from Muslims, but from contessa-brewer speakerines, and from a certain Mayor who, sitting on top of his uncle-scrooge moneybags, can apparently afford to be an utter idiot, and get away with it (proving that business success and intelligence as it should be understood do not always – and I suspect quite rarely – go toether), talking about how there are always “a few bad apples” in every group. How very true, but how very, in this case, misleading. The “bad apples” of Islam, according to Muslims, are those who jettison Islam and dare to tell about it to Infidels, and include such people as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Wafa Sultan,Magdi Allam, Nonie Darwish, Ibn Warraq.Those are Islam’s “bad apples.” Faisal Shahzad, in Muslim terms, was not. His only mistake was in being incompetent and, in getting caught, “hurting the image of Islam.” For in Islam, the true object of worship is Islam itself.
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