Motive Not Clear

This article first appeared in New English Review.

As I write this, Paris has experienced its latest terrorist attack. It follows the all too common pattern: A young man of Middle Eastern or African origin starts attacking people with a knife, wounding or killing people before being shot or captured by police. In Saturday’s case, one person was killed and at least four others stabbed while the attacker, obviously a Muslim, was shouting, “Allahu Akhbar“. ISIS was quick to claim credit calling the as yet unidentified attacker, one of its “soldiers”.

The other variation occurs when terrorists obtain a truck or van and plow it into a crowd of people.

What is beyond comprehension is the fact that in Europe, the police and media almost always fail to fully describe the attackers for the benefit of the public and/or state that the motive for the attack is unknown or not clear. For example, rather than refer to young Muslim males as being perpetrators, Swedish police and media will just call them, youth”. Oft times in Germany, the offenders are referred to as “southerners”. The uninformed reader might assume the attackers are from the Bavarian Alps.

The same holds true for the wave of rapes that Europe is experiencing since they began letting in  hundreds of thousands of young men from the Middle East and Africa as refugees or just plain migrants. And of course, mental illness is uniformly used in Europe to describe the violent actions of a Muslim killer or rapist.

Our own American media is also often guilty of not fully informing the public about the extent of the threat that we face. And so today, CBS has reported that the dead Paris attacker yelled, “Allahu Akhbar” and that ISIS claimed responsibility all the while telling us that the motive was unclear.