Daily Beast Suggests FBI ‘Egged On’ 2015 Jihad Attack on TX ‘Draw Muhammad’ Contest

Is the FBI one of the chief motivators of jihad activity?

The Daily Beast thinks so, as do many others. Friday’s article about how an undercover FBI agent supposedly goaded the jihad terrorists who attacked the Muhammad Art Exhibit and Cartoon Contest in Garland, Texas, in May 2015 has been getting a great deal of attention.

But is a rogue, “Islamophobic” FBI really badgering Muslims who would otherwise have been peaceful, law-abiding citizens until they finally snap and go jihadi?

Only in the Left’s febrile fantasies.

The Beast’s Katie Zavadski writes:

Days before an ISIS sympathizer attacked a cartoon contest in Garland, Texas, he received a text from an undercover FBI agent. ‘Tear up Texas,’ the agent messaged Elton Simpson days before he opened fire at the Draw Muhammad event, according to an affidavit (pdf) filed in federal court Thursday.

“Tear up Texas”? Was that the push Simpson needed?

Zavadski provides the chosen context for her narrative:

That revelation comes amidst a national debate about the use of undercover officers and human sources in terrorism cases.

This “national” debate revolves around the assumption that, absent this undercover FBI agent telling him to “tear up Texas,” Simpson would have remained a peaceful, law-abiding member of the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix.

That Simpson would never have dreamed of driving to Garland with his fellow jihadi, Nadir Soofi, and opening fire at the Muhammad cartoon event. (The event was meant to defend the freedom of speech against violent intimidation. I was co-organizer of the event with Pamela Geller and spoke at it, and was inside the building when Simpson started shooting in the parking lot.)

Elton “Ibrahim” Simpson, however, is an unlikely poster child for entrapment — and Zavadski must know this, at the very least, from the content she included in her own article.

Responding to the undercover agent’s text, Simpson wrote:

U know what happened in Paris. So that goes without saying … No need to be direct.

What happened in Paris? In January 2015, Islamic jihadists murdered twelve cartoonists in the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo for doing exactly what was happening in Garland: drawing Muhammad.

Simpson was saying there was “no need to be direct” — because the FBI agent should have already known he planned to commit mass murder. Further, Simpson wrote that it “goes without saying.”

Ms. Zavadski: how could Simpson possibly have been clearer about your entire article being bunk?

The texts between the undercover agent and Simpson, Zavadski tells us:

… were included in the indictment, released Thursday, of Erick Jamal Hendricks of Charlotte, North Carolina. He was charged with conspiring to provide material support to ISIS. The 35-year-old tried to recruit other Americans to form an ISIS cell on secret compounds and introduced an undercover agent to one of the Draw Muhammad attackers, according to the FBI.

Hendricks, writes Zavadski:

… asked the undercover officer about the Draw Muhammad event’s security, size, and police presence, during the event, according to an affidavit filed in court.

No entrapment there, and none was needed. Hendricks also wrote to the undercover agent, thinking he was in Garland:

If you see that pig [Pamela Geller] make your ‘voice’ heard against her.

Elsewhere in the article, Zavadski refers to Geller as “a notorious Islamophobe.” Tellingly, Zavadski never employs pejorative language for the jihad killers.

So Hendricks tried to recruit a cooperating witness for his Islamic State cell. If the cooperating witness and the FBI informant had not been involved in the case, would Simpson and Hendricks have become stockbrokers?

Well, as Zavadski knows from the remainder of the affidavit, Ibrahim Simpson had been planning to wage jihad for quite some time before the Muhammad cartoon event.

Along with Soofi and Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem, who supplied weapons to the pair and helped them train, he sought information about pipe bombs and plotted to attack the Super Bowl. Simpson also planned to go to Syria to join the Islamic State (ISIS), long before anyone told him to “tear up Texas.”

The Daily Beast’s narrative that the FBI creates jihadists is absurd. It is part of the ongoing mainstream media endeavor to diminish, downplay, and deny the grim reality of Islamic jihad terrorism.

They would have objective, reasonable people believe that if the FBI would leave these poor dears alone, they would never think to carry out the Qur’an’s commands to “kill them wherever you find them” (2:191, 4:89, 9:5), and to apply the Sharia death penalty for “blasphemy.”

In the world of Katie Zavadski and the Daily Beast, jihadis only wage jihad when the racist, bigoted FBI needs to justify its terrorism budget. They think the FBI sends its undercover agents to harass peaceful, innocent Muslims until they are so brainwashed and bullied that they agree to commit mass murder.

Zavadski also notes: