The New York Times just can’t figure this out. How could the man who tried to commit jihad mass murder in the Times Square subway station have passed out medicine in Bangladesh? “Was he following his own heart, reflecting some sort of inner struggle as he headed toward his first known act of violence and self-destruction?”
The New York Times believes the likes of Reza Aslan and Karen Armstrong about Islam, and so it doesn’t know the first foggiest thing about the religion. If it did, it might have noticed that Ullah gave out medicine to Muslims, and tried to murder non-Muslims. The Qur’an says, “Muhammad is the apostle of Allah. Those who follow him are merciful to one another, ruthless to unbelievers” (48:29).
That’s all this is about. Not “some sort of inner struggle.” Not the slightest contradiction between his “mysterious act of mercy” in Bangladesh and his act of jihad in the U.S. And all the Times’ blather about how he was “radicalized” here is contradicted by its own report, which has a Bangladesh official noting that he hated America there. The Qur’an’s jihad teachings are the same in Bangladesh and the U.S.; “radicalization” is treated in the establishment media as if it were some disease that some Muslims mysteriously catch from the Internet. In reality, it’s just a Muslim deciding to act upon Islamic teachings on jihad.
“A Mysterious Act of Mercy by the Subway Bombing Suspect,” by Jeffrey Gettleman, New York Times, December 18, 2017 (thanks to EQ):
DHAKA, Bangladesh — Before Akayed Ullah returned home to New York from his native Bangladesh, and tried to blow himself up with a pipe bomb in a crowded Manhattan subway station, he had one last thing to do — an all-night bus ride by himself to help Rohingya refugees.
After visiting relatives here in the capital city, Dhaka, he traveled across the country, slept in a mosque and under a tree, and passed out a few hundred dollars of medicine in the crowded refugee camps.
“When he left, he seemed happy,” said his mother-in-law, Mahfuza Akhter. “But when he returned, he was so upset. He said those people were living in hell, each and every minute.”
That lonely trip across Bangladesh in September remains a mystery. Was Mr. Ullah following Al Qaeda, who had just urged Muslims to deliver medicine — and weapons — to the Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic group whose members have been raped, brutalized and massacred in neighboring Myanmar?
Or was he following his own heart, reflecting some sort of inner struggle as he headed toward his first known act of violence and self-destruction?
A few weeks after his trip, federal investigators said, Mr. Ullah, 27, returned to Brooklyn and began building a bomb out of matchheads and a piece of pipe he found at a construction site. He detonated it on a busy Monday morning, Dec. 11, in a Manhattan subway station, wounding himself and a few passers-by but doing far less damage than he could have. He was apprehended on the spot.
From a bed in Bellevue Hospital Center on Manhattan’s East Side, he has been cooperating with investigators, saying he was inspired online by the Islamic State to strike against the United States for its policies in the Muslim world. Charged with several terrorism-related offenses, he may never get out of jail. In many ways, his is an open-and-shut case.
But extensive interviews with more than a dozen friends, relatives and acquaintances, in Bangladesh and the United States, still leave a hole as to why Mr. Ullah did this. He comes across as impulsive, angry, riveted to militant social media and outraged by injustices inflicted on Muslims.
He was also described by several people who know him well as loving and giving. And he did not seem hopeless, a classic characteristic of people about to take their own lives, nor was he isolated. He was close to his childhood family — his mother and siblings — and he was building a new one.
“This is a little different,” said Mohammed Abdur Rashid, a retired army general who now runs a research institute on conflict in Dhaka. “He had fewer reasons to feel desperate.”
Bangladeshi police officials have put 15 officers on this case. Mr. Ullah, especially his last actions in the Rohingya camp, represents the union of some of their greatest fears.
Both American and Bangladeshi investigators say Mr. Ullah was not a jihadist export from Bangladesh, but was radicalized after he arrived in New York in 2011. Before that, he did not seem interested in militant groups.
Bangladeshis are deeply worried about this phenomenon — young members of the diaspora becoming radicalized overseas. Mr. Ullah is hardly the first. The mastermind of one of the worst terrorism attacks Bangladesh has ever suffered — the slaughter of more than a dozen foreigners at a bakery last year — grew up and went to college in Canada. Analysts say it is much easier for young Bangladeshis to be buffeted by jihadist propaganda once they are in the West.
“You guys in the West are naïve,” Mr. Abdur Rashid said. “You give more space for the preachers, the hate speech. We don’t tolerate it.”…
“He seemed to have this hatred for America,” said Monirul Islam, the chief of Bangladesh’s counterterrorism police operations. “We’re not exactly sure where it came from. Maybe he hadn’t assimilated so well.”…