Excellent breakdown by Sheila Musaji of the nonsensical conspiracies created by the Islamophobia movement.
She writes that false stories, no matter how absurd do have a negative effect on the perception of Muslims. (h/t: CriticalDragon):
Arlington, Virginia Mall Bombing and “sudden jihad syndrome”
by Sheila Musaji (TheAmericanMuslim)
Leon Alphans Traille, Jr. was arrested this week for an attempted mall bombing in Arlington, Virginia.
It is puzzling how Islamophobes have so little memory about our own recent history. Debbie Schlussel is suspicious because the facts that we know so far don’t add up (in her mind). She wonders how Leon Traille can be a crazy or homeless person and also well educated (M.S. from Georgia Tech).
But, she is on the case. She says
And you can’t help but notice that the once shaven Traille now sports a beard, like many Muslims do when they commit violent jihad. Did Traille convert to Islam? Why did he try to bomb a shopping mall? And why–given his tech expertise–were his bombs so crude and ineffective? A lot of questions.
Brilliant people are not immune from mental problems, or from carrying out senseless acts of violence.
How about the brilliant science student James Holmes, the Aurora Colorado shooter who was getting his PhD at the time of the shooting.
How about the brilliant, and crazy mathemetician Ted Kaczynski who was even better educated than this fellow (with a PhD from Harvard) and carried out a nation-wide mail bombing campaign. Kaczynski lived in a shack in Montana, off the grid, and also grew a beard.
This ridiculous allegation based on nothing except a beard is right up there with the claims by the Islamophobes that Joel Hinrichs and Seung-Hui Cho were probably Muslims.
Joel Hinrichs was the individual who detonated a large bomb made of TATP outside of a packed football stadium in Oklahoma. He was described as an example of “sudden jihad syndrome”. In that case, the “facts” that the Islamophobes used were that there is an Islamic Center near the campus which Hinrich’s roommate attended (the roommate was a Muslim), and Hinrichs was seen walking through the parking lot of this mosque. This is not too surprising for a student whose on-campus apartment was only a block away from the mosque.
Seung-Hui Cho, was the individual responsible for the Virginia Tech massacre. He was considered by the Islamophobes to be possibly another case of “sudden jihad syndrome” because his father had worked in Saudi Arabia before Cho was even born.
It appears that the Islamophobes are engaged in a disinformation campaign that involves throwing out as many crazy charges as possible in the hopes that even one out of a hundred will turn out to be true. In the meantime, whether the charge is totally baseless or not doesn’t matter, because the sheer volume of “crazy Muslim” stories has an effect on the perception of ordinary people who have heard many of these stories.
