Picking up where we left off last night, “AP: Surviving Boston bombing suspect ID’d as Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19; Update: Dead suspect ID’d as Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26; ‘I don’t have a single American friend’ [photos, online accounts],” Twitchy notes:
One suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing was reportedly killed. The second suspect is now being identified as 19-year-old Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev of Cambridge, Mass., and is reportedly still at large.
The two suspects are reportedly brothers from an area near Chechnya, and lived in the United States for at least a year.
Earlier police scanner activity identified missing Brown University student Sunil Tripathi as a possible suspect. NBC reports that he is not a suspect in the Boston Marathon bombing.
Found at Hot Air, Ed Morrissey writes that “Mother Jones’ Adam Serwer reports that Tamerlan was a fan of the ‘al-Qaeda prophecy.'” Serwer notes:
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the 26 year-old brother of the second Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, had a YouTube page where he posted religious videos, including a video of Feiz Mohammad, a fundamentalist Australian Muslim preacher who rails against the evils of Harry Potter. Among those videos is one dedicated to the prophecy of the Black Banners of Khurasan which is embraced by Islamic extremists—particularly Al Qaeda. The videos posted on what appears to be Tsarnaev’s YouTube page may shed light on the motivations for the attack on the Boston Marathon. The prophecy states that an invincible army will come from the region of “Khurasan,” a large portion of territory in central Asia.
“This is a major hadith (reported saying of the prophet Muhammad) that jihadis use, it is essentially an end-time prophecy,” says Aaron Zelin, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy “This is definitely important in Al Qaeda’s ideology.” In The Black Banners, former FBI agent Ali Soufan’s book about his pursuit of Al Qaeda that is named after this prophecy, Soufan describes the prophecy this way:
Khurasan is a term for a historical region spanning northeastern and eastern Iran and parts of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and northwestern Pakistan. Because of the hadith, jihadists believe that this is the region from which they will inflict a major defeat against their enemies—in the Islamic version of Armageddon…
Much more in Ed’s post about both brothers, including a Reuters report that notes that “Boston bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev posted links to Islamic websites and others calling for Chechen independence on what appears to be his page on a Russian language social networking site.”
Update: Bookworm spots the MSM burying the lede once again:
As of this morning, the Washington Post earnestly tells us that, with one bomber in custody and one dead, we still have no idea why they did it. We know that they’re brothers and that they come from Chechnya, a region that’s been having unnamed troubles leading to terrorism. One was a martial artist. And yada, yada, yada. Go in several paragraphs and you still don’t get the words “Islam” or “Muslim.” However, the WaPo finally concedes that one of the brothers wrote a tweet that mentioned “Allah.”
Hmmm. Haven’t I heard that word before in connection with mass murder? Was it a word the Americans on United flight 63 invoked before they saved our nation’s capital from a terrorist attack? No. I seem to recall “Let’s roll,” not “Allahhu akbar.” Is it what Ambassador Stevens went around saying before he was murdered on the eleventh anniversary of 9/11? I don’t think we so. We don’t know his last words, but he wasn’t known for talking about Allah. As I go through the roll call of mass bombings and murders in my mind, I just seem to associate that word with one group. Yeah. I’m sure it’ll come to me.
Seriously, though, this is serious. Once again, we’re facing a situation where Muslims murdered masses and the media is mystified. After Jared Lochner shot Gabby Gifford, they weren’t mystified at all — “It was a right-wing, Tea Party extremist,” they cried in one voice. “Inspired, no doubt, by a Sarah Palin ad that placed a surveyor’s cross hairs over Giffords Senate seat.” When he was revealed as a delusional schizophrenic obsessed with Gifford, the media fell silent.
Even after the Boston bombing, when there was no evidence whatsoever, beyond the peculiar Muslim habit of blowing up large crowds of people, the media knew what to say: A right winger. A Tea Partier. A crazed anti-government killer. Well, they got that last one right. They just left out a few words: “A crazed Muslim anti-non-sharia government killer.”
Early this morning, CNN reminded viewers “You Can’t Blame Any Group For ‘Extremists'” They were singing a very, very different tune in January of 2011, needless to say.
More from Bookworm:
As for the WaPo, a newspaper that thinks it’s reputable, finally, reluctantly, after yet another person died at the bomber’s hands (a police officer responding to a call at MIT), the WaPo admitted, practically in code, reveals a Muslim connection. After two lede paragraphs, they get down to the business of describing the killers (emphasis mine in the 5th WaPo paragraph):
Law enforcement officials identified the suspect still on the loose as Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, of Cambridge, Mass. His brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was identified as the man killed during an encounter with police after an armed carjacking of a Mercedes SUV in Cambridge. Tsarnaev was believed to be in his mid-20s.
The brothers’ alleged motive in Monday’s bombings remains unclear, but they appear to be originally from the southern Russian republic of Chechnya, and two law enforcement officials said there is a “Chechen connection” to the bombings. Chechnya has been racked by years of war between local separatists and Russian forces and extensive organized crime since the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. The extent of the possible connection remained unclear.
According to a database search, Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a boxer who worked out at a martial arts facility in the Cambridge area. In an Internet posting dated Nov. 2, 2011, and attributed to him by name, he wrote: “The more you know about hell, the more you want stay away from sins and keep asking Allah(s.w.t.) for forgiveness.’’
Eleven paragraphs in, the word Muslim finally appears:
The Chechen conflict dates to the early 1990s. In the summer of 1999, fighters in the predominantly Muslim republic rose up in an attempt to throw off Russian domination. Vladimir Putin, then the Russian prime minister, responded quickly, firmly and brutally to put down the rebellion.
At Commentary, Jonathan S. Tobin adds:
Americans awoke on Friday to the news that one of the two suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing was dead and that the other was still on the run as a massive manhunt shut down the greater Boston area. Reports also indicate that the pair, brothers, turn out to be of Chechen origin. This information does shoot down the preferred scenario of Salon and other liberals that have openly expressed the hope that the Boston terrorists would turn out to be “white Americans” who perhaps could be linked to conservative causes.
Michael Moore though, wastes no time spiking the football:
So he’s got that going for him, at least.
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