Here is what we know now:
Mikael Harpon, a 45-year-old French citizen originally from Martinique, deaf since birth, married a Muslim Arab, also deaf since birth, in 2014. He was first described as having been a convert for 18 months, but it turns out he has been a Muslim for much longer. He was a long-time employee, as an I.T. specialist, at the Paris Police headquarters.
He was awake in the middle of the night on October 2. Neighbors reported hearing him say “Allah akbar” twice — undoubtedly they misheard, and what Harpon was saying was “Allahu akbar,” which is a Jihadist war cry meaning “Our God is greater than your god.” His wife reported that he had been behaving in a “deranged” manner — even “hearing voices” — that night. How did she know? Being deaf herself, did he signal or write out “I’m hearing voices”? Most implausible.
The next morning, October 3, Mikael Harpon got up early, donned a djellaba, and went off to his local mosque with two unidentified men. He attended his mosque twice a day, for the first and last prayers of the day. The imam of his mosque was almost expelled for his “radical” — standard Muslim — views.
Later that morning, he bought a ceramic knife with a very sharp 33 cm. blade. He texted his wife about his purchase. She texted him back a message which apparently said, in essence, “Only Allah can judge you.” In fact, in the period leading up to his attack, she exchanged 33 text messages with her husband about religion. It was after examining Harpon’s telephone that the case was taken over by the anti-terrorism police.
After his visit to the mosque on the morning of October 3, where he cursed the kuffar in saying his prayers, and after buying the ceramic knife, and texting his wife about it, he went to the Paris Police Headquarters, where he had worked since 2003 as an I.T. specialist, with security clearance. In 2008, he was arrested for domestic violence — he apparently beat someone (his wife? first wife? his partner? it’s unclear), as 4:34 permits. In 2015, after the Charlie Hebdo killings, he defended those killings and other Islamic attacks. This was reported to higher-ups, and he was investigated, but nothing came of it. He posted on Facebook a disturbing video in which a line of men mimic slitting the throat of the person standing next to them.
His security work included matters connected to Islamic terrorism. That he also posted videos about the sufferings in Syria and among the Palestinians. On October 3, at the police headquarters, he was not subject to a thorough search because he was an employee, not a visitor. After first going to his office on that morning, he then left and went to buy two knives, then between 11:21 and 11:50 he apparently exchanged email messages with his wife, that is, at the rate of one a minute, all on religious themes, and including the war-cry “Allahu akbar.” Then, a little after noon, he returned to the office, where he began his killing spree, slitting the throat — “smite at the neck” — of one of his victims. He went to the office of his supervisor, a woman, whom he stabbed to death. He then frenziedly attacked the other French police in his presence, killing three of them by repeatedly stabbing them, and seriously wounding others. The entire attack lasted all of seven minutes, which testifies to its extraordinarily violence, an attack which ended only when Harpon was shot dead by a policeman who had been on the force for little more than a week.
The French police had at first put out a version of events which stressed the fact that his supervisor was a woman, and she and Harpon had not been getting on. He had received a reprimand from her for his being unwilling to interact with female colleagues. His attack was presented by the police as a settling of scores, “going postal” because of a personal grudge against a workplace superior, ending in murder.
Harpon may well have resented his supervisor, as both an Infidel and a woman who had dared to order him, a Muslim and thus a member of the “best of peoples,” to behave in a certain way with his female colleagues that, as a Muslim man, he no longer felt comfortable doing. But he was clearly ready to kill, in his frenzy of hate, any Infidel he came across, once he had dealt with the supervisor.
The French authorities now must realize that when Harpon’s wife first testified that he had been acting “deranged” and “hearing voices” during the night of October 2,” she was lying, in order to suggest that he had gone temporarily berserk, when we now know he had been contemplating with care such an attack. He had bought the ceramic knife, and text-messaged his wife about his purchase. He had been prompted not by an episode of insanity in the night, as his wife wanted us to think, but by Islamic commands to Believers to “fight,” to “kill,” to “smite at the necks” of, to “strike terror in the hearts” of, Infidels. She was well aware of his plans. After he had text-messaged her about having bought the knife, her response was telling: it was not to try to talk him out of what she knew he planned to do, nor to immediately phone the French police to warn them that Harpon had to be stopped from entering the Police Headquarters, and needed to be taken promptly into custody, for he was armed and extremely dangerous. She did neither. Instead, she responded with a message that, in substance, said that “Only Allah can judge you,” which hardly sounds like an attempt to discourage him. Knowing his murderous intent, and not reporting him at once, made her an accessory before the fact.
Also of interest as possible accessories before the fact are the two unidentified men who accompanied Harpon to the mosque on the morning of October 3. Were these men encouraging Harpon not just to take revenge on his female supervisor, who presumed to tell him what to do, but to kill as many Infidels as he could? Did they remind him — did he really need to be reminded? — that all of the Infidels, the “most vile of created beings,” deserved to be killed, as the Qur’an commands in so many of its verses?
Here are a few:
“Kill them wherever you find them.” (Quran 2:191)
“Kill them wherever you find them.” (Qur’an 4:89)
“Kill the polytheists wherever you find them.” (Qur’an 9:5)
“When you meet the unbelievers, strike the necks.” (Qur’an 47:4)
Did these two men know of his plans? If so, were they trying to discourage or to encourage him? Might they have been the very ones who suggested to Harpon that he buy the extra-sharp ceramic knife, that would not be picked up by a metal detector should he be subject to such a search? Did they encourage him not just to murder his supervisor, but to kill as many Infidels as possible in order to “strike terror” among other Infidels, just as 8:12 and 8:60 command? How did he know these men, why did they accompany him to the mosque that day, what did they talk about with him, going to and coming from the mosque? And where are they now?
When Harpon went to the Paris Police headquarters on October 3, where he had worked without incident as an I.T. specialist since 2003 – and before that, had worked for four years in another location, also without incident – the police did not attempt to stop and thoroughly frisk him. No one wanted to treat him as a possible danger, because he was a Muslim convert. Even though we have a long list of Muslim converts in the West who turned into Jihadis, the police were undoubtedly afraid of searching him, for fear of appearing to be “islamophobic.” He was, of course, according to his neighbors (it is not known if they were also Muslims) living in low-rises in the northeastern Paris suburb of Gonesse, “nice,” “simple” and “someone who liked people.” Yes, of course. We should all keep that in mind.
The Paris prosecutor’s office now has given up the “personal grudge” explanation, and says it believes that Harpon was in touch with a Salafi group – that is, Muslims who want to return the practice of the faith to what it was in the earliest period of Islam. The anti-terror police have surely uncovered evidence — from his cell phone and computer, and possibly from interrogating people who attended the same mosque — of his Salafi sympathies.
This whole ghastly and avoidable tragedy should have one salutary result: no more hesitancy, on the part of the French authorities, or of private employers, to closely monitor Muslim employees, especially converts to Islam, no more fear about being called “islamophobes” or, just as ludicrous, “racists,” no more diffidence about discharging Muslims from positions requiring security clearances, no more reticence about investigating the family members and friends of Muslims under suspicion, no more worries about monitoring the mosques. The people of France have been put on notice, yet again, by these killings at the Paris Police headquarters, that they must take another tack in dealing with the enemy within. Let the sober, the implacable, the unintimidated, institute their severe regime. Muslims will whine, but at this point, in the undeclared, low-level civil war that has been imposed on France by its new would-be colonizers – see the recent appearances of Marion Marechal and Eric Zemmour, whose warnings about the Muslim presence in France seem more prescient than ever — no one should pay attention to “what Muslims demand.” The French will be safer, and at this point, after so many unnecessary victims of a misplaced tolerance for Islam and Muslims, that is all that matters.