Quick, and distrubing, note


A scary plot to kill people at an Illinois mall around Christmas was thankfully stopped

This morning, Hughitt linked to this PDF file describing a plot to detonate grenades in a shopping mall in Illinois Thanks to the efforts of the FBI the plot was stopped. Nonetheless, this is a great example of what we probably have to fear most here on American soul - so called "home grown jihadists." But my main reason for posting this morning was to point out the following excerpt from the report, because it strikes me as both surreal and scary:

In Shareef’s words, he was seeking to target “any place that’s crowded.” Further, responding to the CS’ suggestion that they “disrupt Christmas,” Shareef commented, “Oh hell yeah, the mall is where it’s at.”

Here we have a jihadist muslim, so dedicated to his 'faith' that he is willing to commit suicide and multiple homicide describing his plans in the vernacular of american pop culture. "Where its at" juxtaposed against jihad and allah - American slang and pop culture meets ages old violent hatred and misguided religion.

Mark Steyn was making a point on the radio today that we had better fill American young men with the American ethos, because particularly young men will be filled with something. When we are too afraid or ambivalent about American ideals to teach them to our young people, we leave a void that gangs, radical islam, etc are not afraid of filling. We had better get serious about just what the threat is out there, and we had better stop thinking these people are just in backwards countries or too poor or insane. Here's an example of a young man, completely familiar with American culture as evidenced by his knowledge of slang, shopping malls and Christmas, who logically follows out his Islamist beliefs by devising a plan to kill as many people as he can. He's something of a bold refutation of Western misconceptions - he's so thoroughly suffused with American pop culture he uses our slang in describing how to kill us.

Posted: Thu - June 14, 2007 at 09:46 AM | | | | | | |

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