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Maybe they can blame his “assault” bicycle. A Somali Muslim living in Sweden and dubbed “the bicycle man” has recently been arrested for attacking 21 random people, mostly women, in the Swedish city of Eskilstuna. Prosecutors say they have reason to fear that the migrant will continue committing crimes. Yet three-monkeys style — which is fashionable among Western authorities and media — they say the man’s motives “remain unclear.”
“The military-aged Somali migrant first was brought to the attention of police after several women in the area had reported having been hit in the face and spit on by a ‘very dark-skinned man’ who was traveling on a bicycle,” reported the Voice of Europe (VOE).
The migrant, who has not been identified, is 22 years old, has Somali citizenship, and needed an interpreter to communicate. His attacks began last summer, with the most recent occurring September 17; he was finally arrested three days later “on probable cause for a large number of cases of abuse and fraud, and even illegal threats,” informs Fria Tider.
Just as how white-on-black “hate crimes” capture great attention even when they’re faked (which is a lot) but black-on-white ones get a media blackout, apparent jihadist attacks are routinely met today with the “motives remain unclear” line, points out Jihad Watch proprietor Robert Spencer. Yet Spencer, an anti-jihadism crusader not given to mincing words, suggests a possible motive.
“‘O you who have believed, fight those adjacent to you of the disbelievers and let them find in you harshness,’” he relates, citing Qur’an 9:123 as the source.
“But of course Swedish authorities, like authorities all over the West, know that such passages of the Qur’an never, ever incite Muslims to commit acts of violence against Infidels,” Spencer continues, striking a sarcastic note. “Only the greasiest of Islamophobes would ever dare think otherwise.”
Spencer’s eye-rolling attitude is understandable when considering that he reports on Western willful blindness continually. A sampling of his website’s headlines tells the tale:
• “Minnesota authorities claim that motive of St. Cloud mall jihadi remains unclear.”
•“Reality-resistant authorities probing New York jihad bomber’s motive.”
•“Guardian: Motives of Muslim who beheaded man ‘remain unclear.’”
•“St. Petersburg jihad murderer is Muslim from Kyrgyzstan, Akbarzhon Jalilov” (in story body: “The Telegraph says…’motives remain unclear’”).
•“Video from France: Muslim migrant goes on knife rampage, 1 dead, 9 wounded, cops search for motive” (despite an eyewitness having reported the killer as saying during the event, “They do not read the Qur’an”).
But authorities do read the fashions. Thus do French media describe Muslim rioters merely as “youths,” the British press call Muslim criminals “Asian,” and authorities frequently dismiss jihadist perpetrators as “mentally ill.” Then there’s the Islam-‘splainin’ Globe & Mail columnist who claimed that a 2017 jihadist killer was “not a Muslim.” His reasoning? The man was born Adrian Elms and only converted to Islam later.
As for the reluctance to speculate illustrated earlier, it’s not that media shrink from speculation in principle. As an example and also reflecting a pattern, MSNBC wasted no time profiling the 2015 San Bernardino shooters — who turned out to be jihadists — as possible pro-lifers (read: white Christians).
In fairness, it’s surely true that some jihadist types exhibit mental illness, though do consider the link between that and spiritual illness and that it can be hard knowing where one ends and the other begins. The point, however, is that today’s Europe is a long way from the one in which famed British statesman Winston Churchill could write that Islam’s “fanatical frenzy…is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia [rabies] in a dog.”
In fact, even milder such commentary can today bring hate-speech charges and a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation, as patriotic French leader Marine Le Pen learned the hard way (because, of course, anyone opposing establishment ideology must be mentally ill).
Perhaps, though, research can be mentally ill, too. A case in point is a certain German study involving 45,000 young people. Released in 2010, it found that while increasing religiosity made Christian youth less violent, it made Muslim youth more violent.
But that therapist’s couch could get crowded. After all, an Al Jazeera poll found that 81 percent of respondents approved of the Islamic State; another survey holds that 61 percent of Egyptians approve of attacks on Americans.
And Pakistani Islamic scholar Khadim Hussain Rizvi stated just last month, “We never said that Islam is a religion of peace, and always maintained that we must be harsh on infidels.” How’s that for clarity and motive?
Photo: BrianAJackson/iStock/Getty Images Plus
