On the front page of yesterday’s Union Leader (Greater Manchester Edition) the subheading reads, “Professor knows some of those injured in Monday’s lone-wolf attack.”
The Islamic State has taken credit for the actions of Somali immigrant Abdul Razak Ali Artan who drove his automobile into a crowd and then emerged to attack bystanders with a knife until he was shot and killed by police.
So, if an international terror group takes credit for an act based on a global movement, can you still call this a lone wolf attack?
I think that ship of the desert has “sailed.”
When it comes to terror attacks by individual Muslims, there are no lone wolves. These terrorists are part of a global jihad. Members of the radicalized “friends and family plan” digitally connected to a community of like-minded individuals who have trained or inspired them to kill us and disrupt our way of life to advance a shared goal. They are sleeper agents who attack us while we are asleep. Encouraged to act out at will against the great Satan of Western culture.
(NBC) Law enforcement officials told NBC News the suspect’s name is Abdul Razaq Ali Artan, an 18-year-old student at the university. He was a Somali refugee who left his homeland with his family in 2007, lived in Pakistan and then came to the United States in 2014 as a legal permanent resident of the United States, officials said.
I have not seen Abdul’s pre-Aloha Snackbar social media screed, but it’s probably got something to do with being treated like a terrorist despite a life lived in the diversified bosom of the social justice paradise known as the typical American University. A place where being triggered is not a question of when but how often, by whom, and how to obtain justice for the slight.
There are no lone wolves there either. College students like jihadis are steeped in a culture that claims to be about community when in reality it seeks to isolate them. Everyone is a potential adversary. The language itself has been radicalized. Life is a minefield littered with so many offenses that it is impossible to move.
Acting out is not a question of if but when.
Abdul took to heart the words of religious counselors who tell their “flock” to act out against slights real or imagined. Where is the lone wolf in that?
Or perhaps his diversity counselor was just unavailable for counseling.
Not to worry. Counselors are on the scene until further notice; to help students and faculty come to terms with the shooting of a student by a lone wolf police officer.
The OSU campus is, after all, a gun free zone.
