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DIANA WEST: JIHADI TERROR ISN’T CRAZY, IT’S A MANIFESTATION OF ISLAMIC THEOLOGY…….

Me no snappy, me just jihad happy.

MAJOR JIHAD

Jihadi Terror Isn’t “Crazy,” It’s a Manifestation of Islamic Theology

by DIANA WEST January 4, 2015

Victims of jihad in Australia Alma Cowie_ Katrina Dawson

Victims of jihad in Australia a century apart: Alma Cowie, aged 17, and Katrina Dawson, aged 38

In the spirit of sermons and soda water, Mark Durie provides a clarifying essay that opens the historical horizons on last month’s deadly Martin Place jihad siege in Australia by comparing it to a strikingly similar jihad attack against picnickers in Australia on New Year’s Day, 1915 (via Ruthfully). In discussing these and other cases of “individual jihad” (including reference to the Dutch colonial experience in Aceh) where Muslim killers answer the Islamic call to jihad, Durie demonstrates that the go-to, feel-good explanations about “lone wolves” and “crazies” have no more relevance than fairy tales to explaining the chronic threat of Islam in the West.

Some excerpts below.

“From Broken Hill to Martin Place: Individual Jihad Comes to Australia, 1915 to 2015”

by Mark Durie

One hundred years ago today, a lethal jihad attack was staged against New Year’s Day picnickers in Broken Hill, Australia.  This attack and the recent Martin Place siege, events separated by almost exactly a century, show striking similarities. …

The jihad attack was staged against a picnic train which was taking 1200 picnickers out on a New Year’s Day in open ore trucks.  Bashda Mahommed Gool and Mullah Abdullah first made inquiries at the station beforehand to make sure they would be in the right place at the right time to attack this particular train.  They then positioned themselves on the side of hill around 30 meters from the tracks, and opened fire as the trucks passed.  Among the victims was Alma Cowie, aged 17, shot dead. By the end of the incident the jihadi cameleers had themselves been killed by police.

The two were found to have left notes to explain that they were responding to a call to jihad issued by the Ottoman Caliphate (on 11 November 1914).

The phenomenon of individuals launching a personal jihad against non-Muslim infidels is nothing new. The precedents in the life of Muhammad are well-known and some of these were cited in the Ottoman ‘Universal Proclamation’.  As the Ottoman fatwa indicated, the phenomenon was already a thorn in the side of colonial authorities a century ago.

In the Dutch occupation of Aceh, the phenomenon of individual Muslims killing Dutch people was frequent enough to be given a name, Atjeh-moorden ‘Acehnese murders’.  The Dutch authorities conducted investigations into the mental state of perpetrators of such attacks.  This was not always easy: because the attacks were mounted with the intention of ‘killing and being killed’ to attain martrydom, only a minority of attackers survived in a fit state to be investigated.

The Dutch wrestled for decades to understand the phenomenon.  The psychiatrist R.A. Kern conducted a study of Atjeh-moorden and concluded that while Islamic theology accounted for the common pattern of the murders, this was not enough to determine which particular individuals might be triggered to mount such attacks: for that one needed to look to the personal circumstances of the individuals.

Nevertheless, repeated psychiatric studies of perpetrators showed that they were not mad.  David Kloos summarized their findings: “Over the years, a consensus had formed among the Dutch that the Ajteh-moorden were committed deliberately, in ‘cold blood’ and thus ‘rationally’.[2]  Going for individual jihad was not normally a symptom of mental instability.

There are striking parallels between the Broken Hill massacre a century ago, and the recent Martin Place siege.

In both cases the media puzzled over the motivation of the attackers.  The Barrier Miner wrote in 1915 “The question has been asked over and over again, and by many people since yesterday morning’s tragic occurrence, as to the motive of the men in attacking the picnic train with its load of women and children…”

The attackers in both cases had resided for many years in Australia and were well-known in their communities.

Both attacks were individual acts;  although the 1915 attack by two individuals working together, they were not part of a larger network of jihadis, but were merely combining their individual efforts.

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One Response

  1. Broken Hill is a desert town in NSW. I like it. What a shame it was attacked by Jihadis one hundred years ago. If you go there make sure to visit the art galleries and Mundi Mundi plain where the film Mad Max 2 was shot.

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