Stephen Steinlight writes: Gosh, who would have thought there could be so many causes for this mystifying behavior?!
WOW! Accutane. That’s an unexpected culprit. Now I’m terrified of every adolescent in the country. Just a sensible precaution: if you happen to have an ornery one around the house who’s treating zits and is planning to go on a flight, check the medicine chest to see he or she isn’t taking Accutane. Amazing. It makes them go crazy or, perhaps, "native."
One again, Pipes hits the nail right on the head. It’s comforting to know some of us, at least, have not gone so politically correct we’ve lost the ability to see what’s right in front of our faces.
When a Muslim in the West for no apparent reason violently attacks non-Muslims, a predictable argument ensues about motives.
The establishment – law enforcement, politicians, the media, and the academy – stands on one side of this debate, insisting that some kind of oppression caused Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, to (allegedly) kill 13 and wound 38 at Fort Hood on November 5th. It disagrees on the specifics, however, presenting Hasan as the victim alternatively of "racism," "harassment he had received as a Muslim," a sense of not belonging," "pre-traumatic stress disorder," "mental problems," "emotional problems," "an inordinate amount of stress," or being deployed to Afghanistan as his "worst nightmare." Accordingly, a typical newspaper headline reads "Mindset of Rogue Major a Mystery."Instances of Muslim-on-unbeliever violence inspire the victim school to dig up new and imaginative excuses. Colorful examples (drawing on my article and weblog entry about denying Islamist terrorism) include:
- 1990: "A prescription drug for … depression" (to explain the assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane)
- 1991: "A robbery gone wrong" (the murder of Makin Morcos in Sydney)
- 1994: "Road rage" (the killing of a random Jew on the Brooklyn Bridge)
- 1997: "Many, many enemies in his mind" (the shooting murder atop the Empire State Building)
- 2000: A traffic incident (the attack on a bus of Jewish schoolchildren near Paris)
- 2002: "A work dispute" (the double murder at LAX)
- 2002: A "stormy [family] relationship" (the Beltway snipers)
- 2003: An "attitude problem" (Hasan Karim Akbar’s attack on fellow soldiers, killing two)
- 2003: Mental illness (the mutilation murder of Sebastian Sellam)
- 2004: "Loneliness and depression" (an explosion in Brescia, Italy outside a McDonald’s restaurant)
- 2005: "A disagreement between the suspect and another staff member" (a rampage at a retirement center in Virginia)
- 2006: "An animus toward women" (a murderous rampage at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle)
- 2006: "His recent, arranged marriage may have made him stressed" (killing with an SUV in northern California)
