“‘Gangster-jihadist’: The profile of the Strasbourg terrorist is a familiar one” (Part 2)

Some critics of Islam — significantly, I think, few if any of them actual scholars on the subject or people who have resided for very long as civilians in predominantly Islamic societies — contend that it’s Islam itself that creates terrorists and drives people to violence.  Thus, one might reason, greater devotion to Islam, superior piety, deeper Muslim learning, more faithful engagement in prayer and fasting and almsgiving, would tend to correlate with greater commitment to violent jihad.

But do we find that?

Curiously, most of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims (perhaps there are as many as 1.8 billion) aren’t engaged in terrorist violence and apparently don’t aspire to be.

Rep. André Carson (D-IN), for example, who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, doesn’t appear to be a terrorist.  Nor does G. Willow Wilson, who has written Superman comics and created the “Ms. Marvel” character.  Yet both Carson and Wilson are converts to Islam.

Nor is the Oxford-educated writer and interfaith leader Dr. Eboo Patel a terrorist.

Fazlur Rahman Khan (1929-1982), the structural engineer who, among many other things, designed Chicago’s Willis Tower (formerly called the Sears Tower) and John Hancock Center, seems to have had no terrorist record.  Nor did the Caltech professor Ahmed Zewail (1946-2016), who won the 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

Shahid Khan, who owns the Jacksonville Jaguars, seems more concerned with his team than with gunning down innocent Trump voters.  Likewise, Farooq Kathwari shows no interest in violent jihad, devoting his time, instead, to his work as CEO of Ethan Allen.  And Tariq Farid, the owner and CEO of Edible Arrangements, has no apparent history of involvement in terrorist attacks.

Nor is there much evidence to show that greater devotion to Islam, as such, or superior piety, or deeper Muslim learning, or more faithful engagement in prayer and fasting and almsgiving is an accurate predicter of increased commitment to violent jihad.

But let’s look at a few individuals of Muslim background who have perpetrated violent terror assaults:

I posted an entry yesterday about the late Chérif Chekatt, who killed at least five people on the night of 11 December 2018 at the Strasbourg Christmas market.  He was a gangster and criminal with a very long rap sheet.

In March 2012, Mohamed Merah gunned down three French soldiers and four French Jewish civilians, including a rabbi and three children, in the course of several attacks near Toulouse.  Had he spent his prior years in pious prayer, almsgiving, fasting, and devout study of the Qur’an?  Maybe.  But probably not.  He had been arrested on multiple occasions for petty crime; by age 23, he had been convicted 18 times.

Saïd and Chérif Kouachi were the brothers who carried out the attack on the French satirical paper Charlie Hebdo in 2015.  They killed 12 people in the paper’s office.  In a parallel attack, Amédy Couli killed a policewoman and four hostages at a kosher supermarket in east Paris.  Prior to the attacks, Couli and the Kouachi brothers were petty criminals who came from the housing projects on the periphery of the Paris metro area.

Ziyed Ben Belgacem was killed by law enforcement personnel at Paris’s Orly Airport in March 2017 after he had tried to grab a soldier’s gun in order to shoot others around them.  He had a lengthy criminal record that included violence, robbery, and drug-related offences.

Karim Cheurfi shot and killed a police officer on the Champs Élysées in April 2017.  Cheurfi had already served more than 12 years in prison for shooting at the police and had been jailed four times between 2001 and 2014 for attempted murder, violence, and robbery.

In March 2018, Radouane Lakdim killed the heroic French policeman Arnaud Beltrame, who had taken the place of a female hostage.  Lakdim was also a convicted petty criminal.

I’m not claiming that all violently radical Islamists were criminal thugs before they entered into their version of jihad.  But a significantly high proportion of them seem to have been precisely that:

The Washington Post (2016):  “New ISIS recruits have deep criminal roots”

The Independent (2016):  “ISIS recruiting violent criminals and gang members across Europe in dangerous new ‘crime-terror nexus’:  Exclusive: More than half of European jihadis have criminal histories as Isis offers ‘redemption’”

And I highly recommend this thoughtful essay:

The Atlantic (2016):  “Reborn Into Terrorism: Why are so many ISIS recruits ex-cons and converts?”