NEW MANTRA TO DENY ISLAMIC TERROR: ‘MENTAL ILLNESS’

NEW MANTRA TO DENY ISLAMIC TERROR: ‘MENTAL ILLNESS’
Governments, media ‘trying to obscure motives’ of attackers
Published: August 5, 2016

by LEO HOHMANN

Is “mental illness” the new cover for jihadist attacks on the West? It certainly seems that way, says a noted expert on jihad.

The latest “mentally unstable” young man to launch a seemingly random attack on unarmed civilians was Zakaria Bulhan, a 19-year-old Somali Muslim who had been resettled in Norway at the age of 5. Bulhan singled out an American woman in London and stabbed her to death Wednesday on a busy square filled with tourists, then injured five others in a stabbing spree before being apprehended.

“Authorities have ascribed jihad terror to mental illness on numerous occasions,” said Robert Spencer, including the Orlando, San Bernardino and Chattanooga attacks in the United States. Sometimes it sticks, but usually, days, weeks or even months later, when few people are still paying attention, the police will retract their earlier statements and admit it was a terrorist attack.

In the case of the Chattanooga attack it took the FBI five months to decide that Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez was indeed a jihadist and not simply a mentally disturbed young man who suddenly snapped before shooting to death five unarmed U.S. servicemen.

“What could account for this global outbreak of mental illness that always manifests itself in similar ways?” Spencer told WND in an email. “Authorities should start asking themselves why so many mentally ill people embrace Islamic jihad violence. What are Obama and European leaders doing about this curious epidemic of mental illness among Muslims?”

A profile on a book-rating website in the Norwegian Somali’s name showed an interest in Islamic theology, listing a biography of the Prophet Mohamed and a book of Quran verses and hadiths as recent reads, the Independent reported.

Yet British police remain baffled. They said they continue to “investigate the motives” for the attack, which left 64-year-old Diane Horton bleeding to death on London’s Russell Square. The others injured were an American man, Australian man and woman, an Israeli woman and British man.

Scotland Yard’s first impulse Wednesday was to say the unnamed attacker was “mentally unstable,” a story that was widely reported throughout Europe and on every major TV network in the United States. By the time British authorities released Bulhan’s name on Friday along with the fact that he was a Muslim, the media attention was turned onto other topics of interest, such as the opening of the Olympic Games and Donald Trump’s latest campaign snafus.

And not only was Bulhan a Muslim but a “devout” Muslim, according to his neighbor, who knew him for seven years and told the Daily Mail he saw no evidence of mental illness.

The neighbor, Parmjit Singh, a BBC radio host, said “His mental health problems are a scapegoat. They said he had mental health issues but that was not the boy I knew.”