20 thoughts on “Nice Attack Motive Questioned: Killer Was Troubled Sex Addict, Not Violent Jihadi – Tikun Olam תיקון עולם إصلاح العالم
task-attention.png
Comments are published at the sole discretion of the owner.
 

        1. @ Trippin’ Jon: Did you really say you’re a “wordsmith?” No one’s used that word in a serious vein in decades. Anyone who would use a quaint, overblown word like “wordsmith” to trumpet their writing skills either has an overblown ego; or is living in a long-ago era.

          Palestinians don’t face the enemies that Buddhists, Quakers or ancient Greeks faced. They face F-16s, Apache helicopter gunships, & killer drones. Their enemy is not non-violent. In fact, Israel has killed approximately 40,000 Palestinians since 1948. Tell me one reason why Israel deserves to be confronted by polite, obedient Palestinians who immolate themselves, rather than harm their enemy?

          1. “Tell me one reason why Israel deserves to be confronted by polite, obedient Palestinians who immolate themselves, rather than harm their enemy?”

            Uhh……Thou Shalt Not Kill?

          2. @Trippin’ Jon: When Israeli forces kill 6 times more Palestinians than Palestinians kill Israelis, I think that commandment far more relevant to Israelis than Palestinians. Tell the IDF to stop killing Palestinians wantonly, then we can talk.

            You may not publish more than three comments in any 24 hour period. Respect this comment rule.

          3. @ Trappin’Jon: Bill Gates is certainly no example of a master of prose or the English language. If that’s your arbiter of prose styling no wonder you have arrogated to yourself the title of “wordsmith.”

  1. Au contraire monsieur Silverstein. I daresay that as someone who has studied Islam, the fact that the Orlando and Nice attackers performed gay sex is actually a motivation.

    Under many schools of Islam, a homosexual act is an extreme transgression towards god – punishable in this world by Death. The Death penalty is on the books for homosexuality in several Islamic countries –
    http://www.thegayuk.com/where-in-the-world-is-homosexuality-punished-by-the-death-penalty/
    Afghanistan, Brunei, Iran, Mauritania, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates, Yemen…. and of course “Islamic State” held territories.

    The new convert, or returner to the faith who is gay – understands he has committed an extreme transgression if he performed an act of the men of Lot. If he continues to commit these acts (because this is his nature!) – the situation in terms of faith is even worse if he believes this is a sin he should be killed for….

    Such a new convert or returner to the faith may feel an extreme need to redeem himself in the eyes of fellow believers and God.

    Performing an act of Jihad and sacrificing one’s self on the way to becoming a Sahid (martyr) can be such an act of redemption that might even lead the repenter to heaven and might repair his standing (or rather memory) amongst the devout.

    Thus it is far from surprising that a Gay (or Bi) newly devout extreme Muslim (and specifically an adherent of the Islamic state) would choose to redeem himself by an act of Jihad. To be a devout extreme Muslim and gay…. Is a severe conflict – whose resolution is either ceasing to be a devout extreme Muslim or martyrdom.

    In the Israeli context, many of participants (not all, not necessarily most, but a large fraction) of the knife intafida are young people who want to commit suicide (suicide by cop/soldier as it may). Some of them didn’t really try to kill, but just came out brandishing a knife in the hope of being shot – thus repairing their (post mortem) social standing and any religious transgressions.

    1. @ lepxii: Your argument is not relevant to the Nice attacker. He had absolutely no connection to Islam. As an atheist he was not moved by any Muslim precepts. So presuming, without any evidence to support you, that he had some miraculous revelation that made him realize the error of his ways and provoked this extreme response, is completely off-base.

      If you accept that there are Jews or Christians (at least born that way) who are atheists and either have no relationship or a hostile relationship with their birth religion, why can’t you simply accept that there are Muslims with the same view? It is offensive that you insist, with no proof, that the killer was expiating for his sins.

        1. @ Trippin’ Jon:

          suspect had accomplices and was radicalized over a long period.

          That’s not what the article actually says. It actually says that he planned the attacks over a long period. It does not say he was radicalized over a long period. In fact, it says authorities have as yet found no direct connection between the killer and Islamist groups.

          It does note that he had three Muslim accomplices. It does say at least one had a criminal (but not Islamist) background. It also says that none of them were known or suspected by French intelligence. It also says there were images on the killer’s cell phone that may have some relation to ISIS. All of this is quite circumstantial & not definitive at all.

          It’s possible his Islamist motives will become clearer over time. It’s just as possible they won’t.

          1. “That’s not what the article actually says ”

            No. It says,

            “The authorities initially said they believed that Mr. Lahouaiej Bouhlel, who had not been particularly religious, had become rapidly radicalized over a few weeks before the attack. But on Thursday, Mr. Molins suggested that the attack had been planned for months”.

            So he planned the attack for months, but was only radicalized for a few weeks?

            Okay. I must have missed something.

          2. @ Trippin’ Jon: You made a rhetorical leap unjustified by the actual words on the page. One French official said he had been rapidly radicalized without offering any proof. Now officials are saying he planned the attack over many months. There is no justified leap to saying that he therefore was radicalized over a longer period of time. There is simply no evidence he was radicalized at all. Yet. That may come or it may not.

            As for missing something, indeed you did & do.

  2. If there are some French reading people out there, here’s the link to the interview with Farhad Khosrokhavar, sociologist and research director at the most prominent institute of social sciences in France. It’s the most intelligent thing I’ve read among all the BS that has been published by media and socalled specialists who often seem to have a personal interest in these lunatics being classified as ‘Jihadis’ (being reinvited to respeak about Jihadis …)
    To Khosrokhavar the Nice attack in neither a case of radicalization and probably not even terrorism which is a project to change society through organized terror as he states.
    http://www.20minutes.fr/societe/1893831-20160719-attentat-nice-phenomene-tout-fait-different-radicalisation

    1. Disturbed young men in Nice and Orlando. Olivier Roy says this about the phenomenon: “I think that these guys do not become radicalized because they become more and more religious. It is not religious radicalization that leads to political radicalization. When they became radical, they are religious. They frame their wrath in a religious narrative. They think they will go to paradise. It is Islamization of radicalization. I think Islam is the framework of the radicalization; it is not the primary cause. What I am saying, which there is a lot of misunderstanding about: It is not because they pray more and more, or go more and more to a mosque, that they become radicals. When they became radicals, they choose the religious narrative and believe in it.”
      http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/interrogation/2016/06/olivier_roy_on_isis_brexit_orlando_and_the_islamization_of_radicalism.html

      1. I know Roy’s idea of islamization of radicalization, and I’m sure it’s a useful tool in many cases but I’m not sure it’s worth much for the Nice attacker, after all because your first name is Mohammed, and ISIS claim you’re one of their soldiers doesn’t mean you’re a Jihadi. The nutcase in Nice was not religious at all according to everyone who knew him but everyone said he had mental problems. What I do know is that the politicians here and most media are trying to convince the public that this is a case of #RadicalisationExpress …. the guy turned Jihadi in two weeks, in fact he was the Usain Bolt of RapidRadicalization.

        1. No. In this case it seems there really was no Islamist connection at all. Has that landed in France yet?

          1. No, in fact yesterday we had a totally new version: this is not a case of “RapidRadicalization” but of radicalization with “weak signals”, it seems in fact that this bastard has planned the attack for at least one year (five people have been arrested).

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *