Colorado Man Sets Fire to His Own House Because ‘Allah Told Him To’

A nineteen-year-old in Aurora, Colo. faces charges of first-degree arson, as well as second-degree assault and obstructing a peace officer or firefighter, after he set a fire in his house. The circumstances are an indication of the new era in America that years of Leftist policies have brought us.

The young man’s name is Muhammed Ibraheem Afia. On Sunday morning, he seized his sister’s dolls and set them on top of a lit stove. Then, according to KDVR, he “sprayed lighter fluid around the house and lit 16 candles in another room because ‘God told him to.’”

Afia was more specific than the KDVR report about which God he had in mind (the KDVR report also gives his name as “Afie,” but the police report has “Afia”). The report indicates that what caused the entire incident was Afia’s anger over his sister’s “idols.” According to that report, “The idols were baby dolls in his sister’s room. He placed two of the baby dolls on a lit stove to burn them. He sprayed lighter fluid inside the residence, but did not directly light the lighter fluid on fire. He lit approximately 16 candles in an unoccupied, unsupervised room.”

It would be tempting to ascribe this behavior to the actions of a drug-addled mind, but Afia “denied using any narcotics prior to this incident. All of Afia’s actions were done because Allah told him to.”

The idea of Allah leaning down from his heavenly throne and whispering into Muhammed Afia’s ear that he had to set fire to his sister’s dolls because they were idols will probably get the charges against Afia dismissed on grounds of insanity. And he may well indeed not be of sound mind, but his idea that Allah would want “idols” to be burned, even if they were in the form of something as innocuous as a little girl’s dolls, has precedent in Islamic tradition. One hadith (traditions of the words and deeds of Muhammad and his immediate followers) states: “It was narrated from Anas that Ali came to some people of Az-Zutt, who worshipped idols, and burned them. Ibn Abbas said: ‘But the Messenger of Allah said: “Whoever changes his religion, kill him.”’” (an-Nasai, 5.37.4065)

When police and firefighters arrived, Afia was defiant and combative. He shoved one officer and fought those who were trying to get him into a patrol car; at that point, “his speech was rambling, referring to ‘Allah’ and burning idols.”

But surely Afia’s notion that his sister’s dolls were “idols” in the first place is evidence of insanity, no? Maybe not. Just a couple of weeks ago in France, a documentary uncovered the extent of adherence to Islamic law in the town of Roubaix. One manifestation of the advance of Sharia in Roubaix was the fact that a shop was selling faceless dolls for little girls. The dolls could not have a face, because representation of the human form is forbidden in mainstream versions of Islam, so as to avoid the temptation of idolatry. Muhammed Afia’s sister’s dolls likely had faces; he is not alone among Muslims in considering such figures to be idolatrous and would be right at home in Roubaix.

Related: Kentucky Fried Jihad

When was the last time a house was set on fire in Aurora, Colo. in the process of burning “idols”? I’d venture to guess that this has never happened before at all, in Aurora or likely anywhere else in the United States. It is a result of the Left’s toxic combination of mass migration with an abhorrence of assimilation: it violates the ethos of multiculturalism to require immigrants to adopt or at very least conform to American values, and no one dares speak a critical word of the practices of another culture, for fear of transgressing against the Left’s sacred commitment to “diversity.”

This has led to the introduction into the United States of an increasing number of people who have beliefs and assumptions that eventually lead them to run afoul of the law, that is, if legal authorities are so ethnocentric as to arrest them for practices that violate American law, which is not always the case. Last September, a judge in Detroit threw out the case of a Muslim doctor who was accused of performing female genital mutilation; the prosecution supposedly violated the doctor’s religious freedom. And in Maine in August 2020, according to the Washington Free Beacon, “Democratic Senate candidate Sara Gideon repeatedly killed bills to outlaw female genital mutilation during her tenure as the speaker of the Maine House of Representatives.” Why? Because to outlaw the practice would have been “racist,” of course.

The Left is creating an America in which someone such as Muhammed Afia could be set free without charge in the future, on the grounds that he was simply practicing his religion and that prosecution would be “Islamophobic.” That day is closer than you might think.