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 Just Tony wrote:


Also, does this mean we need stricter vehicle laws in the US?

Don't be silly, cars don't kill people. People kill people.

Was kind of wondering when something like this was going to happen, but from what I heard the good guys with guns did not make an appearance. Kuddis to the police though, for not outright killing him. Now we get to enjoy a trial. (Side question: are trials for crimes like these also done with a jury? My country does not have juries, hence why I'm asking.)

 sebster wrote:
If a Christian man commits an act of terror we ask what the real motive could be, or look for some other issue that could drive a man to such a murderous rampage.

If a Muslim man commits an act of terror we assume that's enough by itself, case closed.

Not every Muslim is a terrorist. That being said, Muslims raised in certain parts of the world have a very high likelihood of being radicalized. The current government estimate is that there are 400,000,000 radicalized Muslims in the world. That's about the population of the US and Canada, so yes, that does worry me.


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 Cream Tea wrote:

Renting a pickup and mowing down civilians armed with a BB gun and a paintball gun (in the US where real guns are quite accessible) doesn't sound like an evil master plan coming to fruition after years of planning. It sounds like the acts of a human being gone off the rails.

.

Hate to point this out, but getting a gun in New York isn't that easy. This guy was also NOT a citizen, so that rules out pretty much any legal gun sale in the state. Even those that would be willing to sell a gun illegally would likely hesitate to sell to an obviously foreign man of Arab decent. Black market arms dealers aren't exactly known for their racial inclusiveness.

 Just Tony wrote:
Two points I'd like to add:

Why, in a world where we have SO many Islamic extremists committing these atrocities, do we need to suddenly disregard Islamic extremism as a motive? Seems pretty cut and dry.



Also, does this mean we need stricter vehicle laws in the US?

Isn't more of an issue where the Islamic Extremism is an effect of the motivation, perhaps even a catalyst, but not really the cause? If we understood what caused these attackers to radicalize in the first place, we might prevent others from radicalizing. The factor we need to study is the Extremism much more than the Islam. This type of crime is much more similar to a spree killing or "going postal" than it is to the 9/11 hijackings.

 Just Tony wrote:
Also, does this mean we need stricter vehicle laws in the US?

Like what? What sort of law could possibly be put into place that would stop someone from getting in their car one day and deciding that "today is the day" then plowing into a group of people somewhere?

Cruxeh wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:


Also, does this mean we need stricter vehicle laws in the US?

Don't be silly, cars don't kill people. People kill people.

Was kind of wondering when something like this was going to happen, but from what I heard the good guys with guns did not make an appearance. Kuddis to the police though, for not outright killing him. Now we get to enjoy a trial. (Side question: are trials for crimes like these also done with a jury? My country does not have juries, hence why I'm asking.)

Breotan wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
Also, does this mean we need stricter vehicle laws in the US?

Like what? What sort of law could possibly be put into place that would stop someone from getting in their car one day and deciding that "today is the day" then plowing into a group of people somewhere?

I agree here, he had a desire to kill people...car or not. Lets say he didn't have access to a car for whatever reason, okay then he would have stabbed people, or found some other way to cause injury. So long as sick people have a desire to do this it is hard to prevent. All you can really do is try and mitigate the amount of damage a person can do and that is not easy.

 Crablezworth wrote:
You're right, it was probably a spur of the moment type of murderous killing spree, the kind that stretch on for a mile. Crime of passion.You know, you just rent a pickup truck one day from home depot and decide, shucks, life just ain't worth a livin, better mow down women and children while shouting the takbir.

Obviously his faith was a prime driver in him deciding to do this. But that is not an answer in itself. Because every day a billion muslims wake up and don't commit mass slaughter, so obviously this guy was very different to most people in his faith.

In the same way, every so often a Christian will bomb an abortion clinic. Obviously their faith played a major role in the decision. But every day a billion Christians wake up and don't bomb abortion clinics, so obviously the ones who do are very different to most of their faith.

 Crablezworth wrote:
When he's yelling the takbir while murdering women and children it's probably a good bet.

You gave two responses to one post I made, with the second response containing even less useful content. That's a new line of approach.

Anyhow, the question isn't 'is it a total coincidence that he's a muslim?', but 'how did his particular branch of Islam combine with other factors to cause this attack?'

Yes, we all scratch our heads, shrug out shoulders and do some real obfuscation and magic thinking every time a christian gets arrested for murdering a doctor or bombing an abortion clinic. Gimme a break seb.

Your opinion here is divorced from reality. We actually do spend time looking in to their specific branch of faith and their immediate religious community. And we look in to their background for any possible causes, marriage breakdown, financial stress etc. We build an overall picture on why this particular person decided to make that attack.

We actually do this Muslim attackers as well. Lots of work is done by law enforcement and some of the better sections of the media. This has resulted in some circles having really good understanding of what the trigger points are, which particularly Islamic communities cause most of the issues etc. It's great work that can actually help to address the problem. Unfortunately very little of that work reaches popular understanding because for too many people 'coz he's a muslim' is enough of an answer.


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 cuda1179 wrote:
Not every Muslim is a terrorist. That being said, Muslims raised in certain parts of the world have a very high likelihood of being radicalized.

That's true, I agree.

The current government estimate is that there are 400,000,000 radicalized Muslims in the world. That's about the population of the US and Canada, so yes, that does worry me.

That figure is stupid beyond belief. I've seen a takedown of a similarly stupid number Ben Shapiro put up, and the con he played is probably the same one used by 'the current government' to produce that absurd figure. The con is that they take surveys and note that a lot of the respondents give deeply conservative answers - support Sharia Law, think 9/11 was done by the West etc... Those are horrible views, no doubt, and it's a big issue that those issues are held by many Muslims, but that doesn't make them radicals.

Radicals mean they want to take part in terror, or support those who do. And let me ask you - if 400m people on Earth were radical Muslims who wanted to conduct terror attacks on the West, how fething lazy must 399,999,999 of them be if at the end of the day one guy is left to hire a car for himself to run down some people?


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 oldravenman3025 wrote:
I'm just waiting for the Western World's Terrorism Response Guide to come into play.

Step 1: Sad, tearful cartoons

Step 2: Facebook flag filters

Step 3: Tearful candlelight vigils in the media

Step 4: Light up some buildings

Step 5: Worry about a "backlash" that never happens

Step 6: Wash, Rinse, Repeat.

Its quite amazing how closely that matches the response we see whenever there's a gun massacre. It says a hell of a lot about both issues.

 Cruxeh wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:


Also, does this mean we need stricter vehicle laws in the US?

Don't be silly, cars don't kill people. People kill people.

Was kind of wondering when something like this was going to happen, but from what I heard the good guys with guns did not make an appearance. Kuddis to the police though, for not outright killing him. Now we get to enjoy a trial. (Side question: are trials for crimes like these also done with a jury? My country does not have juries, hence why I'm asking.)

Hes making a facetious comment about gun laws, since there is talk of stricter gun laws everytime theres a mass shooting.

Trump talks about turning up ‘extreme vetting’ even more, but is that really the answer? Coming through the US customs is unpleasant enough as it is, this recent attacker had been in the US years and avoided all of that. The problem with a lot of the current attackers are that they are not recent arrivals.

 Orlanth wrote:
We need to do more to find these freaks.

You need to do more to stop generating them in the first place.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
Trump talks about turning up ‘extreme vetting’ even more, but is that really the answer? Coming through the US customs is unpleasant enough as it is, this recent attacker had been in the US years and avoided all of that. The problem with a lot of the current attackers are that they are not recent arrivals.

The problem starts with there being no clear policy on what extreme vetting would actually be. Because there's already strict vetting processes in place, and I've not heard about one suggestion about what would be added to turn vetting in to extreme vetting, outside of possibly Mountain Dew. So does it mean expanding vetting processes to more people than just those under existing vetting? I don't know. No-one does. It was a slogan by Trump to signify he was serious about Islamic terrorism and was totally gonna do something. But it was never more than a slogan, there was never an actual policy. The closest we got in office was the travel ban, which was meant to be temporary while they set about adding 'extreme' to the existing vetting practices.

 Just Tony wrote:
Two points I'd like to add:

Why, in a world where we have SO many Islamic extremists committing these atrocities, do we need to suddenly disregard Islamic extremism as a motive? Seems pretty cut and dry.

Because knowing the actual factors involved help identify places where we can improve it. It's all well writing it off as a terrorist attack, but what do you do next? How do you prevent it?

He's been in the US a long time, so maybe there's mental health issues at play, or he's been feeling marginalized; we can potentially do something about both of those with better mental health support and education. Or we can just ban brown people from renting trucks (sarcasm).

Crazyterran wrote:

 Cruxeh wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:


Also, does this mean we need stricter vehicle laws in the US?

Don't be silly, cars don't kill people. People kill people.

Was kind of wondering when something like this was going to happen, but from what I heard the good guys with guns did not make an appearance. Kuddis to the police though, for not outright killing him. Now we get to enjoy a trial. (Side question: are trials for crimes like these also done with a jury? My country does not have juries, hence why I'm asking.)

Hes making a facetious comment about gun laws, since there is talk of stricter gun laws everytime theres a mass shooting.

This guy got it. I seriously didn't think it'd go over people's heads like it did. Just like any time someone uses a hammer or kitchen knife to murder someone, I immediately ask if that means we need to ban carpentry or the culinary arts.

Herzlos wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
We need to do more to find these freaks.

You need to do more to stop generating them in the first place.

What, you mean just showing up non-Muslim? Because that is seriously a motivator to some of the more extreme Islamists. I keep forgetting that every bad person on this planet is a direct result of the US in some way, shape, or form...

 cuda1179 wrote:
The current government estimate is that there are 400,000,000 radicalized Muslims in the world. That's about the population of the US and Canada, so yes, that does worry me.

Do you have a citation for that? That's 5% of the worlds population.

Herzlos wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:
Two points I'd like to add:

Why, in a world where we have SO many Islamic extremists committing these atrocities, do we need to suddenly disregard Islamic extremism as a motive? Seems pretty cut and dry.

Because knowing the actual factors involved help identify places where we can improve it. It's all well writing it off as a terrorist attack, but what do you do next? How do you prevent it?

He's been in the US a long time, so maybe there's mental health issues at play, or he's been feeling marginalized; we can potentially do something about both of those with better mental health support and education. Or we can just ban brown people from renting trucks (sarcasm).

You're right, you know. He probably needed a hug, plain and simple.

Wait, I just assumed that person's gender, I'm already on my way to marginalizing them and turning them into an extremist. Bad me. Bad BAD me.






Seriously, not everything gets solved by counseling. Some people are inherently evil. For simplicity's sake we'll call them Americans, right?

 sebster wrote:

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 oldravenman3025 wrote:
I'm just waiting for the Western World's Terrorism Response Guide to come into play.

Step 1: Sad, tearful cartoons

Step 2: Facebook flag filters

Step 3: Tearful candlelight vigils in the media

Step 4: Light up some buildings

Step 5: Worry about a "backlash" that never happens

Step 6: Wash, Rinse, Repeat.

Its quite amazing how closely that matches the response we see whenever there's a gun massacre. It says a hell of a lot about both issues.

Well, to be fair, American gun owners tend to no bet part of a hateful ideology that promotes child abuse, abuse of women, throwing homosexuals from the roof of a building, and the lying to (taqiyya/kitman), killing (jihad),and forceful conversion of the kuffar (non-believer). And it's a hell of a lot harder to catch somebody who snaps (but looks completely normal until the big event) than a potential jihadist.

 oldravenman3025 wrote:
Well, to be fair, American gun owners tend to no bet part of a hateful ideology that promotes child abuse, abuse of women, throwing homosexuals from the roof of a building, and the lying to (taqiyya/kitman), killing (jihad),and forceful conversion of the kuffar (non-believer).

Look, there are issues in Islam as its practiced in many places around the world. But to assert those issues are universal across all of Islam is simply wrong, and to focus just on Islam for this stuff is just a horrible bit of selection bias - you should do some reading about how Christianity is practiced in much of Africa.

And it's a hell of a lot harder to catch somebody who snaps (but looks completely normal until the big event) than a potential jihadist.

You're wrong. You're wrong that they 'just snap'. The warning flags are similar, the descent in to violence is similar.

It isn't easy to locate ahead of time in either case, but the level of difficulty is the same.

Not for a minute am I saying that the background info I'm posting here is the motivation behind this horrible attack, but in the wider context, it might explain why somebody from Uzbekistan carried out this attack.

From time to time, I read Craig Murray's blog. Craig Murray was the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan. He was sacked for whistleblowing about human rights abuses, and the use of Uzbekistan as a stopping point by the British and the CIA for Taliban and AQ suspects that were captured in Afghanistan.

Uzbekistan is a dictatorship, and not being too keen on human rights, the CIA were happy to 'accidently' leave suspects in the hands of the Uzbek security services.

And if suspects were 'tortured' and if info was 'accidently' revealed, well, the CIA weren't going to put their fingers in their ears. I think people can draw their own conclusions from this. Anyway, Murray was sacked for blowing the whistle on this, and has revealed that a lot of Uzbek people were radicalsied as a result of this kind of action. Uzbekistan is a Muslim nation that is very conservative.

Is it the motivation for this horrible attack? Who knows, but I though people would like to know this background info.

 sebster wrote:

 oldravenman3025 wrote:
Well, to be fair, American gun owners tend to no bet part of a hateful ideology that promotes child abuse, abuse of women, throwing homosexuals from the roof of a building, and the lying to (taqiyya/kitman), killing (jihad),and forceful conversion of the kuffar (non-believer).

Look, there are issues in Islam as its practiced in many places around the world. But to assert those issues are universal across all of Islam is simply wrong, and to focus just on Islam for this stuff is just a horrible bit of selection bias - you should do some reading about how Christianity is practiced in much of Africa.

Would be of terribly poor taste to focus on islam in a thread about islamic terrorism.






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 sebster wrote:


Obviously his faith was a prime driver in him deciding to do this.

It's where he got his ideas from.

 sebster wrote:



But that is not an answer in itself.

No, it's the answer, its been pretty conclusively the answer as to the islamic terrorists motivations since screaming "allahu ackbar" and the note presumably written by him makes it a direct fact of life.

 sebster wrote:


Because every day a billion muslims wake up and don't commit mass slaughter, so obviously this guy was very different to most people in his faith.

You know you're right, he's clearly more devout.


Islamic terror attacks in 2017: 1,049

(that includes attacks by the PKK, who are technically not driven by islamic idealogy but kurdish nationalism) But I guess that fact renders that number meaningless. I mean, all the others are motivated by Islamic ideology to do what they do. Al-shabaab, isis, al-qaeda, taliban, boko haram.

 Crablezworth wrote:
Would be of terribly poor taste to focus on islam in a thread about islamic terrorism.

That comment has nothing to do with the conversation preceding it. There was no issue with Islam being discussed, I was pointing out that focusing purely on the most negative aspects of Islam as a descriptor of the whole is foolish. Your comment that there's nothing wrong with discussing Islam was a completely nonsense reply.

It's where he got his ideas from.

Yes, well done. That'd be what a prime driver is.

No, it's the answer, its been pretty conclusively the answer as to the islamic terrorists motivations since screaming "allahu ackbar" and the note presumably written by him makes it a direct fact of life.

There's a billion muslims. 999,999,999 of them didn't drive a car in to random people today. Which means this guy was different to other muslims. As such, just concluding that this guy is a muslim and that explains the whole issue is incredibly stupid.

You know you're right, he's clearly more devout.

Uurgh.

 sebster wrote:
As such, just concluding that this guy is a muslim and that explains the whole issue is incredibly stupid.

It explains his motivation for murdering the people he murdered, and again in his own words. As for the "whole issue" perhaps you could elaborate on what that ascribed (islam) motivation leaves out?

 Crablezworth wrote:

Islamic terror attacks in 2017: 1,049

How many by people identifying as Christian?

Even the CIA acknowledges that far-right whites are a bigger threat to the US.


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 Just Tony wrote:
What, you mean just showing up non-Muslim? Because that is seriously a motivator to some of the more extreme Islamists. I keep forgetting that every bad person on this planet is a direct result of the US in some way, shape, or form...

My point is that he didn't do this because of Islam, and he wasn't radicalised in Uzbekistan and then smuggled in the US. He'd been here since before ISIS was a thing, so if he was radicalized, it happened on US soil due to a series of US generated conditions. Was he the victim of abuse for being brown in a country with an openly racist president, where white supremacy is almost legitimized? Was he struggling with untreated mental health issues because the care is so poor? Generally to be radicalized, you need to be pretty detatched from the local community and have lost hope, so that the radicalization sounds like an improvement or a way to fight back. Successful, integrated Muslims don't just turn into terrorists because someone asks them to.

As pointed out, it's likely he just went "postal", in the same way a Christian would, and decided to kill people assigning it to ISIS, whilst yelling "God is great". Incidentally, the Christian God is still called "Allah" in Arabic, so it's not even confirmation that he was Muslim.

If it was a pre-planned attack with the help of a wider terrorist network, they'd have been able to supply him with something other than a paintball gun. This all sounds like an impulsive attack by someone who snapped, than an orchestrated terrorist attack.


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 Crablezworth wrote:
It explains his motivation for murdering the people he murdered, and again in his own words. As for the "whole issue" perhaps you could elaborate on what that ascribed (islam) motivation leaves out?

It doesn't. There are millions of Muslims in the US that aren't killing people, so killing people isn't inherent to Islam. Why did this one do it? Because Islam told him to, or because of some other reasons?

Herzlos wrote:
There are millions of Muslims in the US that aren't killing people, so killing people isn't inherent to Islam. Why did this one do it? Because Islam told him to, or because of some other reasons?

Ya seb already did the no true scotsman thing, it didn't add much. Are you aware the perp wrote a note saying he did it for the islamic state? I mean, what does he know about his own motivations?


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Herzlos wrote:

How many by people identifying as Christian?

I'm gonna guess they'll have some catching up to do on 1049 for the year

An interesting website I just found.

http://storymaps.esri.com/stories/terrorist-attacks/?year=2017

Apparently that site only considers something terrorism if it was done by Muslims...

 skyth wrote:
Apparently that site only considers something terrorism if it was done by Muslims...

Right... so Mexican drug cartels are Muslim now.

I mean seriously, did you even bother looking? Like the one in the US where a white man shot Indian's because he thought they were Muslim.

 Crablezworth wrote:

Herzlos wrote:
There are millions of Muslims in the US that aren't killing people, so killing people isn't inherent to Islam. Why did this one do it? Because Islam told him to, or because of some other reasons?

Ya seb already did the no true scotsman thing, it didn't add much. Are you aware the perp wrote a note saying he did it for the islamic state? I mean, what does he know about his own motivations?


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Herzlos wrote:

How many by people identifying as Christian?

I'm gonna guess they'll have some catching up to do on 1049 for the year

Hey dude. Not sure why they contacted me, but ISIS wanted to pass on their thanks for your sterling efforts in supporting their 'it's us vs them and it's inevitable' rhetoric.

Top marks, apparently.

A quick look at wiki says there have been over 1400 terrorist incidents, so that map may be missing a few.

It could be how they define it being in that crowdsourced map thing, maybe requires a certain number of fatalities I don't know.

 MrDwhitey wrote:
A quick look at wiki says there have been over 1400 terrorist incidents, so that map may be missing a few.

It could be how they define it being in that crowdsourced map thing, maybe requires a certain number of fatalities I don't know.

I've been looking through it, not sure. I've seen some listed that had no fatalities, like one in London in September. I would like to know more about it's methodology, but is very clearly more then just "Islamic terror".

Yeah it does show non-islamic stuff, I'm not questioning that in the slightest. Examples being two no-fatality ones in Ireland.

 Crablezworth wrote:

Herzlos wrote:
There are millions of Muslims in the US that aren't killing people, so killing people isn't inherent to Islam. Why did this one do it? Because Islam told him to, or because of some other reasons?

Ya seb already did the no true scotsman thing, it didn't add much. Are you aware the perp wrote a note saying he did it for the islamic state? I mean, what does he know about his own motivations?


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Herzlos wrote:

How many by people identifying as Christian?

I'm gonna guess they'll have some catching up to do on 1049 for the year

Got to get on with marking terrible essays so only had a quick look but at least between 2008 and 2016 in the states, Islamic extremists were responsible for less than half of terrorist incidents. Not sure exactly what qualifies as an 'incident', though, nor the religious affiliations of the other perpetrators, but given the vast majority are on the extreme right I reckon I could have a guess.

In Europe, the overwhelming majority of terrorism has generally been committed by nationalist groups or their opponents - ETA, the IRA etc - though this will be changing since the ceasefires that have toned down many of these conflicts.

Meanwhile, worldwide, there's an awful lot of terrorism that goes on in South and East Asia that has nothing to do with Islam. The former are the world leaders in acid attacks, too, frequently presented as a primarily Islamic phenomenon.