WarSclerotic

Another Day, Another Jihad Massacre, Front Page Magazine, Robert Spencer, July 22, 2016

The events unfolded in predictable fashion: a young Iranian Muslim opened fire at a shopping mall in Munich while screaming “Allahu akbar,” and initial mainstream media reports were that the gunman was a “right-wing extremist,” lashing out on the fifth anniversary of the Norwegian madman Anders Breivik’s massacre, while screaming out his hatred for foreigners. 

As it happened, it was someone else screaming his hatred for foreigners at the jihad murderer, not the other way around, but once again, the lie had gotten halfway around the world before the truth had a chance to put on its shoes.

And the same old comedy, the familiar one that plays out every week now in modern, multicultural Europe and North America, duly played out again, to an increasingly bored and indifferent crowd. Munich police chief Hubertus Andrae informed the world that the young jihadi had no known links to jihad terror groups, and added: “The motive or explanation for this crime is completely unclear.”

Unclear? Really? What is it about “Allahu akbar” and the gunning-down of innocent civilians that you don’t understand, Herr Andrae? And the answer, of course, is: everything. Hubertus Andrae, and Angela Merkel, and Theresa May, and Manuel Valls, and John Kerry, and Barack Obama, and every last one of the other Western leaders are resolutely and determinedly ignorant about what it means when a young Iranian Muslim screaming “Allahu akbar” opens fire in a shopping mall.

What, after all, could it possibly mean? This young man must have come from a troubled home, no? He must have grown up in poverty and been denied access to all sorts of economic opportunities that were open to native Germans of his age, right? He must have been “radicalized on the Internet” by shadowy forces that somehow possess the magic power to turn benign, peaceful Muslims who are a benefit and asset to every Western nation into misunderstanders of their own religion who suddenly and inexplicably discard the peaceful Islamic teachings they have imbibed from youth in their Western mosques, in favor of a twisted and hijacked version of their religion that leads them to think that treason and mass murder are not only commendable, but blessed by the Almighty – isn’t that the case?

The Munich shooter’s motive is completely unclear, because we don’t yet know if he was teased in school or on the job, or if he had trouble getting a job in the first place, or if he had psychological problems, or if he was a brooding loner who always left his moderate Muslim friends disquieted – the only thing we do know is that he couldn’t possibly have been motivated by a religion that exhorts its adherents to “slay them wherever you find them” (cf. Qur’an 2:191, 4:89, 9:5).

No, none of that is true, and one wonders if even the European and North American political and media elites believe in their own nonsense anymore. The Munich mass murderer was motivated by Islam, pure and simple – by its teachings of warfare against unbelievers and the necessity to subjugate them. His war cry of “Allahu akbar,” revered by jihadis for its power to “strike terror in the hearts of the enemies of Allah” (Qur’an 8:60), demonstrates that.

The Islamic State’s repeated calls for the mass murder of civilians in Western countries also demonstrate that. Hubertus Andrae, and Angela Merkel, and Theresa May, and Manuel Valls, and John Kerry, and Barack Obama, and every last one of the other Western leaders persist in pretending that incidents such as the mass murder in Munich on Friday, and the mass murders in Nice, Orlando, Brussels, Paris, San Bernardino, Chattanooga, and elsewhere recently are all separate, discrete criminal acts, unrelated to one another and all requiring extensive investigation to determine the motives of the perpetrators.

That proposition is not only false; it’s a Goebbelsian Big Lie. These are not criminal acts. These are not the acts of the psychopathic or the disenfranchised. These are acts of war, battles in a larger war that has been going on for 1,400 years and is picking up speed in our own age, courtesy of our willfully myopic and feckless leaders. Unless and until Western authorities begin to treat each of these incidents as part of a larger war, they will continue to misdiagnose the problem and apply the wrong solutions.

And that is the one thing they are certain to do. And so there will be many, many more Munichs. Watch this space next week for my comments on the next jihad massacre and the next flurry of predictable denials and obfuscations. My comments next week will be much like my comments here, because the actions of the elites after the next jihad attack will be much like what they have been today. What is it going to take to get leaders who are in touch with reality? Seriously, is that really too much to ask?