Carefully Mix Palestinian Rage and Islamophobia, and Stir

"[Abdulazeez had] numerous weapons. We will treat this as a terrorism investigation until it can be determined it was not."
"It would be premature to speculate on exactly why the shooter did what he did. However, we are conducting a thorough investigation to determine whether this person acted alone or was inspired or directed."
FBI agent Ed Reinhold

Four marines died at the scene of Thursday's shooting, A fifth victim, father of three, named as Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Smith, died of his injuries on Saturday.

"The person who committed this horrible crime was not the son we knew and loved."
"For many years, our son suffered from depression. It grieves us beyond belief to know that his pain found its expression in this heinous act of violence."
Abdulazeez family, Chattanooga, Tennessee

Hadith 38
Allah the Almighty has said: "Whosoever acts with enmity towards a friend [wali] of Mine, I will indeed declare war against him. Nothing endears My servant to Me than doing of what I have made obligatory upon him to do. And My servant continues to draw nearer to Me with supererogatory [nawafil] prayers so that I shall love him. When I love him, I shall be his hearing with which he shall hear, his sight with which he shall see, his hands with which he shall hold, and his feet with which he shall walk. And if he asks [something] of Me, I shall surely give it to him, and if he takes refuge in Me, I shall certainly grant him it."
Text message that Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez sent to a friend

The Abdulazeez family arrived in the United States as refugees in 1991. Mohammad Youssuf Abdulazeez, born in Jordan of Palestinian parentage, was raised in the Chattanooga area where he attended high school, later graduating with a degree in engineering from the University of Tennessee. Strange it is that so many Arabs migrate to the United States and elsewhere, attending university studying engineering, the first choice of professions.

Not so strange, perhaps that Arabs of Palestinian heritage seek violent vengeance against Israel and countries that give support to Israel as a Jewish State with the right of existence.  In 2009 Humam Khalil al-Balawi, a Jordanian physician of Palestinian parentage recruited by the GID for a US Central Intelligence operation, was to use his medical qualifications to penetrate Ayman Zawahiri’s close circle.

Ostensibly working for the CIA, Dr. Balawi gained the Al Qaeda leader’s confidence. On Dec. 30, 2009, when he arrived at the covert US base of Camp Chapman in southeast Afghanistan to deliver his report on the Al Qaeda leader’s plans, the man detonated a bomb vest strapped on his chest, killing himself and nine of the CIA agents standing around him.


On Nov. 9, 2009, Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, with whom the Tennessee killer shared the same Jordanian-Palestinian background, shot dead 13 American soldiers and injured 32 in a sudden attack at the US base of Fort Hood in Texas. Strikingly, the Army major's behaviour had been unusual well before his attack, and his growing Islamism was noted, yet no alarm bells rang.

It would appear that in the current case, the father of Mohammad Abdulazeez had been investigated by the FBI several years back on suspicion of terrorism involvement. His name placed on a watchlist, it was later removed. Can the casual onlooker make the assumption that pere Abdulazeez inculcated in his son a jihadist mentality that conflicted with his son's identity as an 'Americanized' immigrant of Palestinian background?

That might be enough to make anyone under the circumstances of global jihad and Muslim claims of Islamophobia targeting them unfairly, become befuddled about their allegiance, finding the prospect of jihad an alluring one to right what he had been taught was a dreadful injustice against Palestinians whose tribal mentality focuses on the traditional cultural response of vengeance.

His frequent trips abroad, (4 to Jordan in 10 years) including the most recent 7-month stint in Jordan (and a side-trip to Yemen) would certainly have put the finishing stamp on the young man's transformation toward jihad, as an obligation he must fulfill, demanded as the due to Islam by every worshiping Muslim. The blog he initiated days before the attacks bespoke boredom, confusion and resentment. He urged Qur'an study upon himself and presumably others, to lead to a sense of self-identity.

His decision to fulfill his obligations to Islam and the revered Allah by attacking a military recruiting office from his car, then driving the 11 kilometres to a military reserve unit where he killed two Marines, walked to the motor pool area, and killed another two, certainly lifted him into the much-admired cadre of martyrs venerated by a large percentage of Muslims, certain they must defend their religion from the malign conspiracies of non-Muslims to destroy Islam's status as the only religion of peace.

According to news sources, friends of Mohammad Abdulazeez described his anger over the situation in the Middle East; not evidently, that Muslim sects were slaughtering one another by the thousands, but the inferred role of the U.S.-led bombing coalition in targeting Muslim Islamists.The situation of Israel's self-defence Gaza bombing and the civil war in Syria enraged him, according to friends speaking of a transformation after his return from Jordan last year.

"He had always talked about it, but I'd say his level of understanding and awareness really rose after he came back", one of the friends stated during an interview. Friends stated that he had purchased three guns online following his trip to Jordan and practised using them. And it seems his practise gave him the confidence to advance with a plan to advise the world of his Americanized rage as a Muslim invested in jihad.