NBC News reported Saturday that unnamed “experts” ...have said that “the details that have emerged about Jabbar align with the typical pattern of how a veteran can be radicalized to violence.” It seems that it all comes from a downturn in Jabbar’s fortunes: “In the years leading up to Wednesday’s attack, Jabbar experienced his third divorce, accumulated significant debt and lost his corporate job.So to what does Spencer think Jabbar's behavior should be imputed?
Divorce court records from January 2022 reveal he was facing business losses and credit card debt in the tens of thousands of dollars, along with more than $27,000 in overdue mortgage payments. By August of that year, his bank accounts held just $2,012, according to filings in the case.”
Yeah, that may be it. But there are important ways in which this doesn’t explain a thing.
The most obvious problem with this is that there are numerous people in America today who are thrice-divorced and in debt, and in worse situations than that, and it never once occurs to them to drive a truck into a crowd of New Year’s revelers.
There are, moreover, aspects of Jabbar’s behavior that just don’t fit into the scenario of a man driven to despair by personal and professional downturns.
In a video he recorded shortly before his attack, Jabbar told his family that he had originally planned to kill them instead. “I wanted to record this message for my family,” the killer said. “I wanted you to know that I joined ISIS earlier this year.” He added with chilling directness: “I don’t want you to think I spared you willingly.”Jabbar didn't kill his family, Spencer states, because he was afraid that that would've obscured the more important message that there's a war being waged by believers upon the unbelievers.
He explained that he had initially intended to hold a “celebration” for them so that those attending could “witness the killing of the apostates.” NBC helpfully adds that is “an apparent reference to killing them,” but doesn’t bother to pause to explain the significance of his reference to “apostates.”
Jabbar apparently considered his family to be apostates from Islam, whether formally by declaring that they had left the religion, or functionally, by having ceased to practice it. Either way, leaving Islam carries the death penalty in Islamic law, in accord with the Qur’an: “If they turn renegade, then take them and kill them wherever you find them” (4:89).
Also, a hadith depicts Muhammad saying: “Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him” (Bukhari 9.84.57). The death penalty for apostasy is part of Islamic law according to all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence.
There's more at the link, but the reluctance of our authorities and our media to call attention to the fact that Muslims who strictly follow the Qur'an believe they're duty-bound to Allah to kill infidels, if it's a deliberate decision to withhold such information, is a dereliction of their responsibility to clearly state the truth about threats to our society, even if that truth is politically inconvenient.
