Last Wednesday, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, whose father is a veteran of the jihad in Libya and who himself has been a Muslim for at least three years, murdered military reservist Corporal Nathan Cirillo at Ottawa’s National War Memorial and engaged in a gun battle inside Canada’s Parliament building, where he was killed. CNN reported that “according to a U.S. counterterrorism source, Zehaf-Bibeau was connected to Hasibullah Yusufzai through social media. Yusufzai is wanted by Canadian authorities for traveling overseas to fight alongside Islamist fighters in Syria.” Also: “Other radicalized people connected to Zehaf-Bibeau are still believed to be living in Canada, two U.S. law enforcement officials said.”
Zehaf-Bibeau’s religious identity, family ties and associations make it highly probable that his rampage in Ottawa was a jihad attack, as was the final ride of his fellow Canadian Muslim Ahmad Rouleau, who, two days before Zehaf-Bibeau began shooting in Ottawa, deliberately hit two Canadian soldiers with his car, killing one. One of Rouleau’s close friends said: “It was a terrorist attack….The caliphate called all the Muslims on earth to fight. He listened to what they had to say and he did his part here.” Nonetheless, the usual denial, obfuscation, and pandering have ensued from law enforcement officials and the mainstream media.
5. Derek Stoffel of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
Before Zehaf-Bibeau’s identity was known, CBC’s Derek Stoffel tweeted: “Amid the speculation in the #OttawaShooting in #Canada, it’s important to remember #ISIS hasn’t shown interest in attacks abroad.”
Stoffel should have known that in late September, the Islamic State’s spokesman, Abu Muhammad Al-Adnani, urged Muslims to murder non-Muslims in the West. “Rely upon Allah,” he thundered, “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. Kill the disbeliever whether he is civilian or military, for they have the same ruling.” He also addressed Western non-Muslims: “You will not feel secure even in your bedrooms. You will pay the price when this crusade of yours collapses, and thereafter we will strike you in your homeland, and you will never be able to harm anyone afterwards.”
Stoffel quickly deleted his tweet and backtracked from his flagrantly counter-factual statement, but he wasn’t alone in ignoring the obvious and creating a fictional alternate reality:
4. Vox
The hard-Left Vox reacted to the revelation that Zehaf-Bibeau was a Muslim by dismissing the fact as irrelevant:
These reports imply that because Zehaf-Bibeau was Muslim, jihad is the likely motivation for his attack. But at this stage, without any actual evidence, it makes no more sense to come to that conclusion than it would to assume that he was motivated by Quebecois separatism, just because he was from Quebec. At this point, our focus on the Ottawa shooter’s religion says more about our own fears than it does about anything to do with Islamist terrorism.
Of course! Quebecois separatists have so often shot up government buildings and murdered Canadian soldiers! Why, wasn’t it just a few weeks ago that a Quebecois separatist leader told his followers (in French, of course) to “kill the English-speaking Canadian whether he is civilian or military”?
It takes great minds like those at Vox to come up with this high-level analysis. Others likewise urged caution:
3. ABC News
Once Zehaf-Bibeau was identified as the shooter and was known to be a Muslim, ABC News one-upped Stoffel’s confident fantasy-based analysis with the claim that “authorities in Canada are trying to understand what motivated a gunman to kill a soldier in the country’s capital Wednesday.”
What motivated him was glaringly obvious, but it was the one thing most Western government officials and all of the mainstream media have determined to ignore, so the search was one for some other remotely plausible motive that could be sold to the public.
2. The Globe and Mail
Toronto’s Globe and Mail decided that Zehaf-Bibeau must be crazy. After all, he couldn’t have been motivated by Islam’s jihad doctrine, which is peaceful and benign, so his shooting rampage simply must have been the product of a diseased mind. Its report offered no evidence of this diagnosis beyond quoting a friend of Zehaf-Bibeau saying, “I think he must have been mentally ill.” And how did the friend come to this conclusion? Zehaf-Bibeau, you see, “frequently talked about the presence of Shaytan in the world – an Arabic term for devils and demons.”
In other words, Zehaf-Bibeau must be insane because he spoke frequently of what are standard beliefs of mainstream Islam. Oh, the Islamophobia! It’s extremely unlikely that, if they were aware of this, the politically correct editors of the Globe and Mail would want to stand by this analysis.
1. The police chiefs of Ottawa and Toronto
In the wake of the shootings in Ottawa, the police chiefs of Toronto and Ottawa wrote to local Muslim leaders, assuring them of their good will and urging Muslims to contact them in case of a “backlash.” These politically correct cops appear to have learned their lesson well: after every jihad attack, Muslims are the victims, and need special reassurances.
Just received email message from @OttawaPolice Chief Charles Bordeleau #ottshooting #OttawaShooting pic.twitter.com/4vJoP2YO11
— Sikander Hashmi (@kanataimam) October 22, 2014
Of course, there should be no “backlash” against any innocent people and almost certainly won’t be, but this endless pandering is grotesque. Who is reassuring non-Muslims about keeping them safe from jihad attacks? Who is calling upon Muslim leaders in Canada or anywhere else to back up their condemnations of jihad terror with real action against it, including programs to teach young Muslims to reject that understanding of Islam?
No one. Instead, the chiefs and the mainstream media made sure, in the aftermath of Zehaf-Bibeau’s rampage, that all the prevailing politically correct fantasies were intact. And since that is their primary concern, rather than stopping future jihad attacks in Canada, they thereby helped ensure that there will be many more such attacks.
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