The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Canadian Terrorist: Crazy Muslim

Posted on | October 23, 2014 | 44 Comments

We learn that Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, the terrorist killed in his attack Thursday on the Canadian Parliament building in Ottawa, was both mentally ill and a convert to Islam:

Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, the slain 32-year-old suspected killer of a Canadian Forces soldier near Parliament Hill, was a labourer and small-time criminal — a man who had had a religious awakening and seemed to have become mentally unstable.
Mr. Zehaf-Bibeau was born in 1982 and was the son of Bulgasem Zehaf, a Quebec businessman who appears to have fought in 2011 in Libya, and Susan Bibeau, the deputy chairperson of a division of Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Board. The two were divorced in 1999. . . .
Mr. Zehaf-Bibeau grew up in Eastern Canada, including Ottawa and Montreal, and had spent time in Libya before moving to Western Canada to become a miner and labourer, according to friend Dave Bathurst.
Mr. Bathurst said he met Mr. Zehaf-Bibeau in a Burnaby, B.C., mosque about three years ago. He said his friend did not at first appear to have extremist views or inclinations toward violence — but at times exhibited a disturbing side.
“We were having a conversation in a kitchen, and I don’t know how he worded it: He said the devil is after him,” Mr. Bathurst said in an interview. He said his friend frequently talked about the presence of Shaytan in the world — an Arabic term for devils and demons. “I think he must have been mentally ill.”
Mr. Bathurst last saw Mr. Zehaf-Bibeau praying in a Vancouver-area mosque six weeks ago. He spoke of wanting to go to the Middle East soon. . . .
At the Burnaby mosque, Mr. Bathurst said his friend’s “erratic” behaviour — he did not elaborate — caused frictions with the elders at the house of worship, who asked him to stop attending prayers. At that time, Mr. Zehaf-Bibeau was living in a barely furnished single-room apartment.
Mr. Bathurst said he recalls his friend being arrested at the mosque a few years ago after bizarrely calling police to tell them about a crime he had committed many years before.

We can expect more information about the terrorist to be reported over the next few days, but I think we already have the basic picture. Next question: Is there a direct connection to ISIS or another international Islamic terrorist conspiracy?

Authorities haven’t disclosed any connection between the gunman, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, and ISIS. . . .
This summer, ISIS released a video featuring a Canadian reportedly named Andre Poulin making a pitch for recruits. The video showed the group’s intensified efforts to bait international recruits. It also highlights a message that a normal Westerner gave up a good life of comfort to join jihad — and so can others. Poulin’s speech is interspersed with beauty shots of Canada.
And last month, ISIS released a 42-minute recording in which it asked Canadians to kill civilians and military members.
“Rely upon Allah, and kill him in any manner or way however it may be. Do not ask for anyone’s advice and do not seek anyone’s verdict,” the recording said.

There are unconfirmed reports of evidence of a direct ISIS connection to Zehaf-Bibeau, but we will wait and see.

As I said Thursday, the “leaderless cell” model of underground terrorist organization can make it difficult to connect the dots and prove that Killer X is part of Group Z. Furthermore, in the Internet age, radicals can broadcast their messages and any “lone wolf” can respond to those messages and, unless the “lone wolf” terrorist makes a statement or leaves behind a bread-crumb trail of electronic evidence, you can’t really say that Radical Message A directly led to Terrorist Act B.

So we don’t know, and may never know, exactly how it was that Zehaf-Bibeau went from crazy Muslim to terrorist. Rather than focus on the details of that, however, let’s look at the general pattern in the context of history. What you find about killers like this is that the misfit or mental case has both real-life problems and an extremist ideology. Think about Lee Harvey Oswald who, like Zehaf-Bibeau, was the product of a broken home and, like Zehaf-Bibeau, adopted the ideology of a foreign enemy. Whereas the Canadian-born Zehaf-Bibeau became a Muslim in the 21st century, the American-born Oswald became a Marxist at a time when the Soviet Union was America’s greatest enemy.

What causes some people to adopt the ideology of hostile foreign powers? They are misfits and malcontents who are alienated from their own national society, hostile to the dominant culture. By identifying with an extremist ideology, this type of warped personality seeks a kind of empowerment that enables them to enact their fantasy of revenge on the society that rejects the misfit.

And you know what? That describes the typical feminist.

Think about that.

 

Category: Canada, Islam, Terrorism

Comments

44 Responses to “Canadian Terrorist: Crazy Muslim”

  1. Dana
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 7:05 am

    Our esteemed host described Mr Zehaf-Bibeau, as “both mentally ill and a convert to Islam.”

    Personally, I am disappointed that a professionally trained journalist like Mr McCain would write such a redundant description.

  2. Bob Belvedere
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 7:29 am

    Could not it be said with great accuracy that anyone who converts to Mohammedism is mentally ill?

  3. Quartermaster
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 7:54 am

    Redundancy for the sake of emphasis.

  4. Weedlord BonerHitler
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 7:55 am

    “You ever had a Muslim coworker? I hate how they bring up suicide vests at the water cooler. You’ll be talking about that new model Tesla, and they’re like, “yeah, that car is cool, I admit, but hey, have you guys seen the new Cyber-Martyr 4000G? It talks to your smartphone and gives you real-time data on your various physiological factors, letting you know if you’re maintaining an appropriately inconspicuous demeanor. I tell ya, it’s tough sometimes, when you’re 5 minutes from your target, and your heart is pounding at the thought of all the virgin meat you are going to be swimming in in just a few short minutes. The new model also coordinates with other vests in the area and gives you navigation to guide you to the most densely occupied public spaces to maximize blast efficiency and reduce redundant bombings. Nothing is worse than showing up at your designated target only to find that some other bomber has beat you to it. You’re hot and sweaty, the vest is starting to chafe, and now you realize you’ve gotta walk 5 miles to the other market because some jerk didn’t notify the proper administrative units.” — JW

    Genius.

  5. Fail Burton
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 7:56 am

    I agree radical feminists have basically taken up anti-social positions that border on plain insanity and formed them into a supposed ideology. The problem is it is an ideology of hate for Western white male heterosexuals. That unholy focus where all others slide away tells you it’s an obsessive disorder, not a dispassionate view of the world around them. Radfems pretend to some binding principle that operates like law or a baseball umpire but in fact hypocrisy and double standards are the beating heart of intersectionalism.

    For example, in all their cries for diversity and inclusiveness, it’s never romance novels, Islam, Bollywood, the NBA, delta blues music, middle-weight boxing, Samba music or anything but a combination of white, Western, heterosexual and male. That’s pretty weird considering how much radfems talk about global issues nowadays.

    Tor.com, the website associate of the largest publisher of science fiction in the world, Tor Books, not long ago had a post by a gay intersectionalist woman calling for the end of binary depictions of sex in science fiction. Damien Walter at The Guardian had an article saying “Science fiction needs to reflect that the future is queer.” He later Tweeted “Google ‘intersectional’…” The former head of the Science Fiction Writers of America blogged at us to “bone up on intersectionality.” In other words we’re seeing a direct reflection of what you’ve been talking about with radfems and their obsession with “fluid gender identity,” as The Guardian put it.

    This is a huge movement in SF and 100% of this year’s Hugo and Nebula Award winners were either radfems or supporters of them. That’s pretty stunning when you think radfems are probably statistical zero of all women in America. They are very nutty people and act like the KKK they supposedly hate.

  6. Trespassers W
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 8:07 am

    “Damn it! Just once, why can’t it be a Baptist Tea Party member?” (says the Lickspittle Media(TM) to itself)

  7. RS
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 8:28 am

    No doubt, there are the “true believers” whose actions are rationally determined by their ideology. However, there is also no doubt that radical ideologies attract a disproportionate number of socio- and psychopaths. It is a coping mechanism for them, I think. It provides an external validation and “courageous” veneer to their otherwise murderous pathology and therefore, plays directly into the hands of the recruiters. IS is not concerned about ideological purity or mental health. It is concerned with sowing destruction in the Non-Muslim West.

  8. texlovera
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 8:31 am

    “…a man who had had a religious awakening and seemed to have become mentally unstable.”

    After reading that, I immediately said to myself, “substitute ‘woman’ for ‘man’ and ‘feminist’ for ‘religious’, and you would still be accurate.”

    And of course, our host made that point at the end of his post….

  9. Bob Belvedere
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 8:45 am

    The problem is, as it always is, Ideology.

  10. Bob Belvedere
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 8:46 am

    Sowing destruction by any means necessary, like, um, the Left.

  11. RS
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 9:07 am

    True. Of course, the useful idiots of the Left refuse to believe that they will be consumed, too.

  12. theBuckWheat
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 9:35 am

    You might not be interested in Islam, but Islam is interested in you. Every person in the west should have at least a cursory knowledge of the “Religion of Peace” that insists on forcing you to either “convert, submit or die”.

    If anyone wants to see the level of ritual and rules that govern the life and thought of a faithful Muslim see their classic manual, Reliance of the Traveler:

    http://www.shafiifiqh.com/maktabah/relianceoftraveller.pdf

    I really encourage people to try to read it and the Koran, at least once. While the Bible is organized and full of long narrative accounts, the Koran is chaos. The Bible is the story of how truth triumphs over power. The Koran is an attempt to state that power triumphs over all, especially over humanity.

    The issue for our civil society is not that most Muslims are not violent. It is that their religion calls them to be ruthlessly violent towards unbelievers when Islam can be advanced. This has not yet dawned the secular elites in our
    society.

  13. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 9:39 am

    It is like the Borg.

  14. RS
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 9:44 am

    Islam is/was first, foremost and always a political movement. I do not respect it as a purported new “revelation” in the tradition of monotheism. Our political leaders do us a disservice when they attempt to label Islam a religion. Christ told his disciples to shake the dust off their sandals from those towns which wouldn’t listen to the Gospel. Islam says to behead them. God doesn’t change His mind in the space of a few centuries.

  15. Kirby McCain
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 9:50 am

    Mentally ill and susceptible to Islamic radicalization.

  16. MeasureForMeasure
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 10:06 am

    It seems the mom works for the Canadian Dept of Immigration
    and is a radical feminist and the Dad is a Muslim who fought in Libya, in addition to the parents being divorced. Radical Islam and radical feminism is not a good combination.

  17. Quartermaster
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 10:34 am

    The Koran is chaotic because the religion itself is demonic. Islam is about enslavement to a vengeful moon good and sin is OK as long as it advances Islam. Christianity is about the liberation of mankind from the enslavement of Satan and sin. God pronounces judgment on those that do the work of God deceptively.

    The origins of the two are completely different, and the adherents of both have much different destinies.

  18. Quartermaster
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 10:39 am

    You can follow the battle over Science Fiction at Vox Day’s place. He is a former member of SFWA and quite versed on the machinations of the idiots that staged the putsch to take it over.
    According to Day, Tor is suffering a bit for the publishing of idiots like Scalzi and others. I don’t even pay attention to the Nebulas or Hugos anymore as they have become as meaningless as SFWA has idiotic.
    SciFi fans are not taking the stupidity well and Day’s Castalia House appears to be taking off. Baen seems to be doing well too. Baen only cares about publishing good yarns that people will buy. Tor, OTOH, is being run by PC morons.

  19. Bob Belvedere
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 10:58 am

    LENIN: We’ll ask the man, where do you stand on the question of the revolution? Are you for it or against it? If he’s against it, we’ll stand him up against a wall.

    Source: Paul Johnson, Modern Times.

  20. trangbang68
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 11:33 am

    Or every person in the West should have at least a cursory knowledge of how to lock and load and double tap the first Moon God loonie tune that goes off in their community.

  21. trangbang68
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 11:34 am

    I can see her, some fat, unkempt loser hooking her grievance cart to a salafist loser and producing the spawn of Satan

  22. Fail Burton
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 11:43 am

    The battle is over. As you point out, core SF is dead. People have fled to friendlier climates. The woman published by Tor who happily Tweeted no white men won a Nebula this year was the 261st best-seller at her own publisher and sells in the hundreds, not thousands. Good riddance.

  23. Mm
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 12:39 pm

    Boom.

  24. Adobe_Walls
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 2:46 pm

    Francis W. Porretto over at liberties torch writes Science Fiction(books) and speaks to this subject from time to time at Liberty’s Torch.
    Like GamerGate I never paid much attention to the Political Correctness Totalitarian’s assault on SciFi writers. This is either the beginning of the total ascendancy of the PCTs or the beginning of their end. We just, only just, may have a choice in this. Their reach appears to be exceeding their grasp of late. The task is to make sure they’re left with only a bloody stump.

  25. Steve Skubinna
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 2:51 pm

    Wait, you’re talking about the Troubled Youth/Honor Student/Altar Boy who was turning his life around and was shot to death by an old white man? Way I hear it, the poor kid was on his way to choir practice/tutoring poor kids/volunteering at the homeless shelter. Didn’t he have a sandwich and Skittles in his hand?

    Oh wait, didn’t happen in the US? Sorry, never mind. Guess the reverends Al and Jesse can stay down here then. And Obama doesn’t have to skip another fundraiser.

  26. Quartermaster
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 2:53 pm

    I referred to Vox Day because he has the most posts about the issue than anyone else I’ve seen to date. I’ll take as look at Liberty’s Torch and see what he has to say. Day can get a bit tendentious at times, and it would nice to have another viewpoint.

  27. Quartermaster
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 2:54 pm

    I shudder at that spiritual DNA.

  28. Quartermaster
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 2:55 pm

    They like to think they are. Given what Islamists are, however, resistance is not futile.

  29. yonaton
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 2:56 pm

    “…was both mentally ill and a convert to Islam”

    Some might say you repeat yourself 😉 But then, it doesn take a special kind of crazy to convert to Islam.

  30. Quartermaster
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 2:56 pm

    I had a Muslim coworker about 22 years ago. He was a pretty good structural Engineer too. Couldn’t have asked for a nicer guy.

    Ironically, he was married to a Southern Baptist for 10 years. She left him for some reason and it really hurt him a lot. I never heard him say a bad thing about here until after she left him, and then it was the natural stuff you’d expect from a guy that was abandoned for reasons he didn’t know.

    I’m sure she had swallowed the version of Radfem Philosophy extant at the time.

  31. Adobe_Walls
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 2:56 pm

    In Christianity murder is a sin because it is wrong. In Islam murder is wrong (but allowed sometimes) because Allah say’s it’s a sin.

  32. Adobe_Walls
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 2:57 pm

    Imagine the dinner table conversations.

  33. Quartermaster
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 2:59 pm

    Please! Oh, please no!

  34. Adobe_Walls
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 3:02 pm

    Resistance even when futile is it’s own virtue.

  35. Quartermaster
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 3:05 pm

    There are times when you must because it’s better to die on your feet than live on your knees.

  36. Adobe_Walls
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 3:25 pm

    http://bastionofliberty.blogspot.com/

    I find Porretto one of the most thoughtful and thought provoking writers on the intertubes. Must read writers are an impossible standard as there aren’t enough centuries in the day to read everything we’d like to or should get to.

  37. Fail Burton
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 3:51 pm

    The stuff SFF’s radfems write is straight up KKK stuff, only against whites. They are some genuine swine. And they’re always going on about being anti-racists. They’re some of the dumbest people in America. Think 11 yr. old racist and that’s about it.

  38. concern00
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 4:19 pm

    Crazy Muslim…yet another tautology.

  39. I Guess the Canutes’ Deradicalization Efforts Failed, Up There in Canada, Eh? | Regular Right Guy
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 4:30 pm

    […] Robert Stacy McCain has some excellent thoughts this morning on the mindset that makes for potential radicalization, drawing from history; but we don’t yet know if Muslim convert Michael Zehaf-Bibeau was only a mentally ill self-radicalized believer, or a tool of ISIS or some other extremist group. […]

  40. Adobe_Walls
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 4:55 pm

    ” Do not ask for anyone’s advice and do not seek anyone’s verdict,” the recording said.”
    This is actually the evil genius part of the plot. Daesh or really any jihadi/islamist group that can produce a podcast or video acts as the trigger. These are broadcast or made available on the internet knowing that there are millions of believers who could be waiting for their moment. Even if only a couple of fanatics respond the effort has been a success. The instruction not to ask for advice, even if these individuals are already on the radar, keeps them functionally anonymous. This creates the fear that anyone could be about to snap and run you over or cut your head off. Assume that half of all Muslims worldwide hold radical views. How many Muslims are there in the US or in Canada? What ever that number is 50% are potential jihadis.

  41. Weedlord BonerHitler
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 9:48 pm

    I had two Muslim coworkers recently. One was an amazingly gorgeous and intelligent young lady who was about as Western as you can get, a Valley Girl at heart. A little spoiled but only just enough to seem more attractive. The other was a young man who was outwardly very charming and likable, but once you got to know him, it became clear that he had serious personality issues. He would reflexively lie to anyone over the smallest things, always dodging responsibility and blaming everyone else for his mistakes. He lived a sort of double life, where he played the dutiful son for his family, all the while sneaking around and getting stoned & drunk and pursuing casual sex with women he seemed to despise. It became sickening to me, to hear his rail against “sluts and whores” in one breath, and then politely submit to his mother’s admonitions over the phone the next. Judging by these two, I think radfemme domination of the Muslim world could improve it quite a bit. Let the Muslim world become like that matriarchal planet from Star Trek:TNG. they’ll put people to work and bomb stuff less often.

  42. Bob Belvedere
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 10:02 pm

    Jeez, Steve: you forgot to mention ‘aspiring rap artist’.

  43. theoldsargesays
    October 23rd, 2014 @ 11:32 pm

    “both mentally ill and a convert to Islam.”

    It is as Allah wills it.

  44. FMJRA 2.0: I Can’t Breathe Anymore : The Other McCain
    October 26th, 2014 @ 2:34 pm

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