Handelsblatt Global reported Wednesday that German federal prosecutors are investigating an incident in which a Muslim migrant took a hostage and threw a Molotov cocktail “a possible terrorist attack.” However: “Authorities said they weren’t ruling out terrorism but are keeping an open mind after it emerged that the attacker, a 55-year-old Syrian asylum-seeker, may have been suffering from psychological problems, appeared dishevelled with unkempt long hair and a three-day beard, and was under the influence of alcohol.”
Note also that authorities don’t even say this time that this “asylum-seeker” had a history of psychological problems, as they often claim, but only that he “may have been suffering from psychological problems. The evidence? He “appeared disheveled with unkempt long hair and a three-day beard, and was under the influence of alcohol.”
Yes, of course. Why, everyone knows that jihadis are always clean-shaven and well-groomed.
Buried way down in the story was the fact that “the police said he told passersby he belonged to the ‘terror group Daesh,’ which is the Arabic acronym for Islamic State.”
He told people he was with the Islamic State, but Cologne officials are discounting that not because they have any evidence to the contrary, but only because he doesn’t fit their profile of how a jihadi is likely to present himself. Yet that profile is almost certainly based on fantasy, wishful thinking, and politically correct willful ignorance about Islam.
That only clean-shaven people with neatly combed hair can be jihadis is actually unproven. That he was drinking is immaterial, because jihadis know that their act of jihad will outweigh any sins they commit. “We shall set up scales of justice for the Day of Judgment,” says the Qur’an (21:47): if one’s good deeds outweigh one’s evil deeds, one will go to Paradise, but if one’s evil deeds outweigh one’s good deeds, one will go to hell.
And what good deed weighs the most? A hadith has a Muslim asking Muhammad: “Instruct me as to such a deed as equals Jihad (in reward).” Muhammad replied, “I do not find such a deed.” (Bukhari 4.52.44)
So if a believer goes on jihad, his good deeds will outweigh all his evil deeds. Thus if a jihadist knows he is about to wage a great jihad, he knows its value will outweigh anything evil he has done, and he can relax a bit, have a few drinks, etc.
He “may have been suffering from psychological problems”? If so, then he may have decided to wage jihad as an attempt to get into Allah’s good graces and do something to outweigh all the evil deeds he had committed. In any case, “mental illness” is a common dodge for officials today who want to downplay and deny the idea that a jihad attack has been committed. It is used so often as to invite doubt and ridicule whenever it is invoked.
So once again we have a case that is not being classified as terrorism not because the evidence doesn’t point in that direction, but because it would apparently be inconvenient for authorities to admit the reality of what went on. Angela Merkel’s government has every reason to downplay or outright deny that various jihad terror incidents were indeed jihad terror: to admit that jihad violence was becoming an increasingly common feature of daily life in Germany would be to admit that Merkel’s policies regarding mass Muslim migration have made the nation more dangerous and squalid than it was before, and that it needs to be.
For German authorities to admit what was really happening in their country, and in particular what happened in Cologne last week, would be to admit that the ruling elites have put their nation on the path to cultural and societal suicide. It would not only be political suicide for Merkel and Company to admit that – it might also open them up to charges of treason. And so instead, we get treated to an endless series of absurdities such as this one. The Cologne hostage-taker wasn’t a jihadi, you see, because his hair wasn’t neatly combed. Right. Next up: the man who wasn’t a jihadi because his shoelaces were untied.
Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His new book is The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.