Motives Of Terrorists Murdering In Name Of Islam Still Mysterious

“It’s a total enigma,” remarked Hedda Pmyass, a professor of comparative religion at Columbia University.

New York, December 1 – In the wake of yet another Islamist attack this week, religion experts are still scratching heir heads over the possible motive behind the attackers’ invoking the name of Allah and Islam as they try to kill and injure as many people as possible.

Following the same pattern that emerged after the Fort Hood, San Bernardino, Minnesota, and Orlando massacres, among others, scholars throughout the Western world voiced continued puzzlement at the inscrutable considerations that might have led a Somali refugee imbibing Islamic State and Al-Qaeda materials to wreak violence at Ohio State University in Columbus.

“It’s a total enigma,” remarked Hedda Pmyass, a professor of comparative religion at Columbia University. “We have to develop some way of getting inside the heads of these perpetrators to figure out why they’re doing what they’re doing. As it stands, the only things we have to string these incidents together is that they happened to be the work of people loudly citing the same source of inspiration. That’s never enough to establish motive unless the perpetrators were, for example, Jews, Trump supporters, or cops.”

Journalists and politicians in particular have warned against jumping to conclusions about the murderous incidents, stressing that “we just don’t know” what jihadi rhetoric and tactics have to do with establishing the driving force behind the attacks. “It’s just irresponsible to claim you have the answer,” insisted prospective Democratic National Committee chairman Keith Ellison. “There’s nothing clear-cut about these situations. It’s different from, for example, characterizing all Israeli policies as harmful by dint of their being Israeli policies. In that case, we know their motive is just evil oppression and exploitation, so the conclusions come naturally.”

No such simplistic analysis will serve to uncover the motives of the Columbus attacker, he explained. “This is just conjecture, obviously, but I think a more productive avenue of investigation would involve taking a good hard look at immigration policy to determine how much wider to open the gates to Muslims. Perceived adverse treatment of Muslims must always be the starting assumption in these cases, because if Muslims are held to account as if they have actual free will and have the capacity to distinguish right from wrong, who knows where that line of thought will lead?” he shuddered. “That could undermine an entire set of progressive political agendas. THAT’s your motive right there. Now you know exactly who must be at fault. Cui bono?”

Please support our work through Patreon.