Justin Sullivan converted to Islam in September 2014; that was when, says his father, he began “acting combatively.” Just three months later, he murdered a man who was a neighbor of his parents in Morganton, North Carolina. And last week, he was sentenced to life in prison for plotting a jihad massacre in the U.S. for the Islamic State.
But it’s not jihad, it’s “mental illness.”
The Charlotte Observer noted that, at Sullivan’s trial:
… a Durham psychologist … testified that Sullivan suffers from psychological problems that could spiral into full-fledged schizophrenia.
We have seen this sort of thing many times before.
A Muslim was arrested in June 2016 for a jihad plot to attack tourists and police. He was found with a knife and a machete. According to the Telegraph:
[T]he suspect has a history of psychiatric problems and has been diagnosed as schizophrenic, but is considered nonetheless “truly radicalized” with a “serious profile.”
Authorities did not always grant that these supposedly mentally ill jihadis were “truly radicalized.” Last March, a Muslim in Germany attacked a 59-year-old man riding his bicycle, bashing his skull with a hammer. Police announced: “The suspect may have a mental illness.” They stressed that this was not a jihad attack, the attacker was simply “mentally ill.”
Another Muslim in Germany who wounded nine people with an axe in a train station was also not a jihadi; he had “mental health problems.”
In August 2016, a Muslim stabbed six people in London, murdering one of them. The BBC reported:
[T]he Met Police’s assistant commissioner for specialist operations, Mark Rowley, said the investigation was increasingly pointing to the attack being “triggered by mental health issues.”
That same month, a Muslim entered a police station in Toulouse, France and attacked a police officer, stabbing her in the throat — in strict accord with the Qur’an’s command: “When you meet the unbelievers, strike the necks” (47:4). He, too, had a “psychiatric disorder.”
That was also the verdict in the case of Gyulchehra Bobokulova, the Muslim woman who in May 2016 beheaded a four-year-old girl and then paraded her severed head through the streets of Moscow. She screamed “Allahu akbar” while brandishing the girl’s head and said that Allah had ordered her to behead the girl. She seems to have had an Islamic State boyfriend. She had become religious not long before the beheading, and started wearing hijab. She says the beheading was revenge for Russian airstrikes on Muslims in Syria. She told her son to pray five times a day and live in accord with Sharia.
Despite all that, however, she was declared insane and not brought to trial.
Likewise, a Muslim in Paris who stabbed a Jewish woman to death while screaming “Allahu akbar” may not face trial in light of claims that he was not in his right mind when he committed the murder.
In Uruguay last year, a Muslim screaming “Allahu akbar” stabbed a Jewish man to death, and later explained that in committing this murder, he had “followed Allah’s order.” But a judge ruled that he was “suffering from chronic psychosis of schizophrenic type” and “was not able to appreciate the wrongfulness of his actions.”
A Muslim who was shouting “Allahu akbar” outside a Brooklyn synagogue in July 2016 and had two knives in his car was, according to the New York Daily News, nothing to be concerned about:
[I]nvestigations by the NYPD and FBI showed Joudeh, 32, was emotionally disturbed and not a terrorist threat.
Last month, a Muslim who stalked through a Jewish area of London screaming “Allah, Allah” and “I’m going to kill you all” was also not a jihadi. A police spokesman explained:
He was detained by officers under the Mental Heath Act. No one was injured. This is not being treated as terror-related.
Apparently the cry of “Allahu akbar” is itself a sign of mental illness. Last month, a Muslim in a Metro station in Lausanne, Switzerland, began screaming “Allahu akbar,” causing commuters to run away in terror. But there was nothing to be concerned about. The prosecutor explained:
[T]his is a person who was afraid his life was in danger. At the height of his crisis, he began to face paranoia. Then he called to God for help. This is what he did last Friday in the subway shouting Allahu akbar.
An anti-Christian animus is also a sign of mental illness. Last Christmas, a Muslim was arrested in Italy for setting fire to a Nativity scene. He explained that as a Muslim, he “wanted to destroy Christian symbols.” But police said he was simply suffering from a “visible psycho-physical crisis.”
Similarly, in Germany last October a Muslim screaming “Allahu akbar” burst into a church during a wedding and began destroying the flowers and tearing down the wedding decorations. Police were called to the scene; one explained: “We tried to calm the obviously traumatised Syrian man.” Once subdued, the “traumatized” man was taken to a psychiatric hospital.
Of course. Everyone knows that nothing but mental illness would make a Muslim scream “Allahu akbar” and cause a disturbance in a church.
Mental illness is also the cause of anti-Americanism among Muslims. Military Times reported that in November 2015:
[A] Jordanian police captain opened fire in an international police training facility, killing two Americans and three others. The government subsequently portrayed the police captain as troubled.
Of course. What else could he be?
Are you seeing a pattern? What could account for this global outbreak of mental illness, that always manifests itself in similar ways?
Authorities should start asking themselves why so many mentally ill people embrace Islamic jihad violence. This sort of thing happens so often that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders should consider adding “Islamic jihad” to its next edition.
What are the learned theorists in North America and Europe planning to do about this global epidemic of mental illness?
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