Sudden Jihad Syndrome (in North Carolina) - article by Daniel Pipes

Daniel Pipes said it within days of the Manhattan Incident of September 11, 2001 (22 Jumada t'Tania 1422 AH). And he's saying it again:

Individual Islamists may appear law-abiding and reasonable, but they are part of a totalitarian movement, and as such, all must be considered potential killers.

Such was the case with Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, who rented a four-wheel-drive vehicle and used it to run over people at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill.

Pipes goes on:

This is what I have dubbed the Sudden Jihad Syndrome, whereby normal-appearing Muslims abruptly become violent. It has the awful but legitimate consequence of casting suspicion on all Muslims. Who knows whence the next jihadi? How can one be confident a law-abiding Muslim will not suddenly erupt in a homicidal rage? Yes, of course, their numbers are very small, but they are disproportionately much higher than among non-Muslims.

This syndrome helps explain the fear of Islam and mistrust of Muslims that polls have shown on the rise since September 11, 2001.

I have more than my observations of apparently law-abiding residents suddenly performing acts of terrorism, whether as "lone wolves" or in direct concert with, and receiving logistical support from, that shadowy network that calls itself "The Base." I have my studies of the Koran, which studies I began directly after the Manhattan Incident. I sought to discover whether those who accused the hashshasheen in the Manhattan Incident of hijacking the religion of Islam had any basis for their statements.

Their basis, such as it is, is merely that most Muslims don't even know what their own holy book says. They recite it in the original Arabic and don't understand a word of it. But those who do understand it, now have a choice to make: either live up to those words, or drop the whole thing. And they're choosing to live up to those words.

The trouble is: those words are fighting words. "Fight and slay the infidels wheresoever ye find them"--it couldn't be any clearer.

Pipes offers this remedy:

The Muslim response of denouncing these views as bias, as the "new anti-Semitism," or "Islamophobia" is as baseless as accusing anti-Nazis of "Germanophobia" or anti-Communists of "Russophobia." Instead of presenting themselves as victims, Muslims should address this fear by developing a moderate, modern, and good-neighborly version of Islam that rejects radical Islam, jihad, and the subordination of "infidels."

That remedy might be beyond their power. They'll have to take scissors and snip out whole segments of the Koran, probably by saying that everything that Muhammad said beyond his skedaddling to Medina is false and misleading, because he was insane (a legal term meaning "not responsible for one's actions by reason of loss of mental and moral faculties") when he wrote it. At least one Muslim cleric in Italy has announced that very position. But it won't work.

And so our society will have to make a hard choice. Unhappily, our own history is not promising.