Revelatory Cause and Effect

"My son said that he shared [IS leader Abu Bakr] Al Baghdadi’s ideology and supported the creation of the Islamic State. He was also obsessed with Israel. I told him he had to stay calm and be patient because in two years Israel will not exist any more. Geopolitics is changing: Russia, China and America don’t want Jews there any more. They are going to bring the Jews back to Ukraine. What is the point of fighting? We have already done it and we lost. Israel is not to be fought with weapons, but with politics. But he did not listen to me, he was obsessed."
"Rizwan’s mother is very religious, as he was, and they united against me. Once we had a dispute over the historical figure of Jesus. My son called me a godless person and he decided that my marriage with my wife had to end. They destroyed the family."
Syed Farook, father of San Bernardino terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook

"Muslim-Americans are our friends and our neighbors, our coworkers, our sports heroes. And, yes, they are our men and women in uniform who are willing to die in defense of our country."
"We have to remember that."
U.S. President Barack Obama

Victims are treated at the scene -- NBCLA.com via Reuter

Syed Farook junior hasn't fallen that far from his father's values, simply enlarged upon them and instead of resigning himself to hope that circumstances through realpolitik would eject Israel from the Middle East, determined to make his own mark in solidarity with Islamic State. His sisters, Saira Khan and Eba Farook, have expressed their anguished reaction at the tragedy that has overtaken the Muslim community they live within.

There were no warning signs, they claim, that their brother and his wife,  were preparing to be actors in an atrocity that would leave 14 people dead and 21 injured.

It is, they profess, unIslamic and does not reflect the values they grew up with. "I am not ashamed to be Muslim. I am not ashamed to be American either, and I am not ashamed to be Pakistani either. I think shame is for people who feel guilty about something", his sister Eba said. "It’s harder for us to understand, especially knowing that he was our brother and he was so happy with her [his wife]. How can he leave his only child, you know? And how could the mother do this?"


Indeed, how could they? Why would they? The irresistible urge to be one with the values of the Islamic State, evidently. Ms. Khan intends, with her husband, to adopt the 6-month-old little girl whose jihadi parents left her bereft of mother and father. While they attained blessed martyrdom, the tiny girl attained status as an orphan. Left with Mr. Farook’s mother before they began their rampage, the child is now temporarily in custody of the county’s child protective services.

So how does a normal, well-adjusted woman choose to sacrifice her status as a mother of a dependent child for one of martyrdom glory? Nisar Hussain, one of Ms. Malik’s professors at Bahauddin Zakariya University in Pakistan spoke of her as a gifted student, at the top of her class in the university’s department of pharmacology. "She was religious, but a very normal person as well. “She was a very hard-working and submissive student. She never created any problem in the class. She was an obedient girl. I cannot even imagine she could murder people", he said; not so much as a hint of mental illness.

Does fanatical Islamism equate with a viral pathology of mental illness?

A relative in Pakistan said that Ms. Malik’s religious beliefs appeared to undergo change during her university years; that relatives became concerned with her radical postings on social media. She began speaking Arabic with online friends, a language that family members in Pakistan did not speak and which she clearly attained while living in Saudi Arabia with her father. "None of our family members in Pakistan know Arabic, so we do not know what she used to discuss", explained the relative.

"The terrorist threat has evolved into a new phase", President Obama stated in his most recent press conference from the Oval Office. "I know that after so much war, many Americans are asking whether we are confronted by a cancer that has no immediate cure." Perhaps it is only a wide-spread mental affliction without cure. "As the internet erases the distance between countries, we see growing efforts by terrorists to poison the minds of people like the Boston bombers and the San Bernardino shooters."

Let us not linger on the role of Islam itself in these radicalization events. The Fort Hood massacre of 13 people by U.S. Army Major and psychiatrist Nidal Hassan in 2009 predated the advent of Islamic State, and the declaration of "Allahu Akbar!" is pretty well all-purpose to any and all attacks by jihadists against non-Muslims, as well as those Muslims unfortunate enough to somehow displease their more rigid co-religionists. But, as President of the United States, there is an obligation to speak softly and avoid civil confrontations.

"It is clear that the two of them had gone down the dark path of radicalization", said Mr. Obama with the emphasis on authorities having had little (not none at all mind, in the way of warning) evidence of a plot directed by the Islamic State. However, "This was an act of terrorism designed to kill innocent people. We should not be drawn once more into a long and costly ground war in Iraq or Syria; that’s what groups like ISIL want."

"The strategy that we are using now — airstrikes, special forces and working with local forces who are fighting to regain control of their own country — that is how we’ll achieve a more sustainable victory"; this of an virulently hateful, violence-and-atrocity-celebrating group of fanatics taking their cue from original Islamic texts to justify their predations on humanity, whom he once referred to as the 'varsity team'. That was, needless to say, before their home-grown champions began to wreak havoc in the U.S.

"They know that if we occupy foreign lands they can maintain an insurgency for years, killing thousands of our troops and using our presence to draw new recruits", said the President, with recent history to back up his assertions. But whether the United States takes the plunge and puts boots on the ground as Russia has begun to do or not, there will be nothing to quell the ardour of Islamists to their task of conquest, a challenge they feel justified in believing that Allah orders them to succeed at. This is what they are enjoined by the Koran to do for Islam must see universal surrender.