Utah mall gunman was Srebenica survivor

cnn.com ^ | 12/15/07 | cnn

[Serb29]

CERSKA, Bosnia (Reuters) -- The 18-year-old gunman who shot five people to death in a Salt Lake City, Utah, shopping mall was a survivor of the siege that ended in the Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslims in Bosnia's 1992-95 war, a cousin said on Wednesday. Sulejman Talovic, who was killed by police after Monday's shooting spree in which he also wounded four people, fled his village with his family during the Bosnia war to Srebrenica, a U.N.-protected enclave, Redzo Talovic said." "They spent two years in the town, during which Bosnian Serb forces besieged the enclave and Talovic's grandfather was killed by shellfire, Redzo Talovic said. When the Bosnian Serbs overran the town in 1995, taking away and massacring some 8,000 Muslim men and boys, Talovic and his mother were evacuated by the United Nations and later reunited with his father, Redzo Talovic said. "They were a good, quiet family, and I remember that he was a nice kid when he was 4 or 5, maybe a little bit playful," he said, standing in front of the burned-out shell of the Talovic family home in the village of Talovici, eastern Bosnia.

[zimdog]

Another strange oddity is to state as fact what is untrue or has been denied by scholars for example the term "nasara" as meaning Christian when it certainly does not.

This is an interesting claim. How do you translate nasara then, if you don't translate it as "Christians"?

Here's Qur'an 2:62:

إِنَّ الَّذِينَ آمَنُواْ وَالَّذِينَ هَادُواْ وَالنَّصَارَى وَالصَّابِئِينَ مَنْ آمَنَ بِاللَّهِ وَالْيَوْمِ الآخِرِ وَعَمِلَ صَالِحاً فَلَهُمْ أَجْرُهُمْ عِندَ رَبِّهِمْ وَلاَ خَوْفٌ عَلَيْهِمْ وَلاَ هُمْ يَحْزَنُون

Now, here are three major translations of that verse. I've highlighted "Christians" for you:

"YUSUFALI: Those who believe (in the Qur'an), and those who follow the Jewish (scriptures), and the Christians and the Sabians,- any who believe in Allah and the Last Day, and work righteousness, shall have their reward with their Lord; on them shall be no fear, nor shall they grieve.

PICKTHAL: Lo! Those who believe (in that which is revealed unto thee, Muhammad), and those who are Jews, and Christians, and Sabaeans - whoever believeth in Allah and the Last Day and doeth right - surely their reward is with their Lord, and there shall no fear come upon them neither shall they grieve.

SHAKIR: Surely those who believe, and those who are Jews, and the f Christians, and the Sabians, whoever believes in Allah and the Last day and does good, they shall have their reward from their Lord, and there is no fear for them, nor shall they grieve."

And here's the 9:5 you've mistranslated above. Nasarakuffar is. But the translations don't mention Christians at all.:

فَإِذَا انسَلَخَ الأَشْهُرُ الْحُرُمُ فَاقْتُلُواْ الْمُشْرِكِينَ حَيْثُ وَجَدتُّمُوهُمْ وَخُذُوهُمْ وَاحْصُرُوهُمْ وَاقْعُدُواْ لَهُمْ كُلَّ مَرْصَدٍ فَإِن تَابُواْ وَأَقَامُواْ الصَّلاَةَ وَآتَوُاْ الزَّكَاةَ فَخَلُّواْ سَبِيلَهُمْ إِنَّ اللّهَ غَفُورٌ رَّحِيمٌ

"YUSUFALI: But when the forbidden months are past, then fight and slay the Pagans wherever ye find them, an seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every stratagem (of war); but if they repent, and establish regular prayers and practise regular charity, then open the way for them: for Allah is Oft-forgiving, Most Merciful.

PICKTHAL: Then, when the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever ye find them, and take them (captive), and besiege them, and prepare for them each ambush. But if they repent and establish worship and pay the poor-due, then leave their way free. Lo! Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.

SHAKIR: So when the sacred months have passed away, then slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush, then if they repent and keep up prayer and pay the poor-rate, leave their way free to them; surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful."

I eagerly anticipate your groundbreaking translation.

[zimdog]

I'll remind you, lqclamar, that eleni121 chose to insult decorated war veterans just to avoid praising a Muslim. I would say that is bigotry.

And I have similar reasons for all the other "false accusations" you cite.

For the sake of FR, for your own sake, just drop it.

[EDINVA]

We are supposed to excuse the rampage because he was a victim of or witness to Serbian violence ?

How many refugees has the US taken in who've experienced far worse than this kid and who never would have contemplated that kind of madness?

I'm not exactly sympathetic.

[Razz Barry]

The 18-year-old gunman who shot five people to death in a Salt Lake City, Utah, shopping mall was a survivor of the siege that ended in the Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslims in Bosnia's 1992-95 war, a cousin said on Wednesday.

Sad they missed him in the "massacre". No telling how many more of those 8,000 would be trying to kill Americans if they'd had half a chance.

[zimdog]

The only numbers fudging was Zimdog, who originally used a base figure of over 275 thousand to take his "muslim troop count" when in reality less than half of those ever made it into the service, just over half of those ever made it to Europe, 10% were white French officers, and sizable portions of the remainder were from non-muslim colonies like Madagascar and the French colonies in central Africa. All of that information was in the original article he quoted from, but he chose not to share it - intentionally IMHO.

Your misrepresenting the article and your misrepresenting the numbers again. The article clearly stated that 122,000 soldiers in West Africa were mobilized to defend France, including some 9000+ French officers who may or may not have been white. The article also clearly stated that the Tirailleurs Sénégalais contributed 275,000 troops over the course of the war, that is to say before the fall of France and also in the subsequent FFL army.

I am being quite straightforward. I will ask you once again to stop misrepresenting my arguments and the arguments of the reputable historians I cite.

What also needs to be noted of the few muslim French troops that did serve is this: they were forced conscripts.

Yes, the 180,000 Muslim West Africans were mostly drafted. Many re-enlisted after their 3 years were up, but many were initial volunteers.

I will kindly ask you to stop denigrating the service of troops who bravely fought the Nazis simply because you dislike their religion or their continent.

[zimdog]

How many refugees has the US taken in who've experienced far worse than this kid and who never would have contemplated that kind of madness?

I don't know how easily we can rank the trauma of massacres (if he was a targeted victim, which I don't believe is ever directly proposed) but your point cuts to the heart of the matter and is, of course, correct.

[zimdog]

There's a huge difference between GI draftees who get drawn from the selective service and people grabbed at random off the street by the French colonial press gangs.

You clearly don't understand how people were drafted into the French army.

Frankly, lqclamar, I don't understand why you have such hostility to decorated Muslim World War 2 veterans who fought the Nazis you claim to detest.

[lqclamar]

The full quote from Sheck clearly shows he was referring to non-mobilized troops before the armistace:

"The overall number of Tirailleurs Senegalais deployed in France between September 3, 1939, and June 25, 1940, was 100,000, but around one-third of them were still in training or in transit when the armistice took effect; see "Troupes Coloniales en 1939-1940: La mobilisation et la periode d'attente," L'Ancre d'Or Bazeilles, no. 256 (1990), 27-38. For a list of soldiers mobilized in France's colonies in 1939-40, see Fargettas, "Le massacre des soldats," 2:26. Altogether, over 122,000 people were mobilized in French West Africa before the armistice, including 9,622 Europeans (mostly officers). The Tirailleurs Senegalais made up the lion's share of the colonial troops (275,354 men, total), followed by the Indo-Chinese units (88,898 men)."

[lqclamar]

Added to the list of defamatory allegations by Zimdog, for both insinuation regarding the authenticity of my disdain for Hitler and for falsely accusing me of denigrating colonial troops by noting the undisputed fact that they were unwilling conscripts:

"I don't understand why you have such hostility to decorated Muslim World War 2 veterans who fought the Nazis you claim to detest."

According to the rules of FR this is a personal attack.

[zimdog]

To respond to some of your accusations:

1) Denigrating the service of decorated Allied soldiers because they happen to be African, Muslim, or conscripts. Is indeed a "wrongheaded, bigoted, or downright dangerous" idea.

2) Donna does not believe the Baha'i concept of God is the same as the Christian and Jewish concept of God. This is the official Iranian position on the Baha'i faith.

3) You have consistently downplayed the heroic service of Muslim Africans in World War 2 -- and African culture in general -- for no reason other than your personal dislike of the people or their religion.

4) As mentioned before, eleni121 preferred to insult all World War 2 veterans rather than praise a Muslim. That's bigotry.

5) When you say: Falsely accuses several freepers of bigotry - "A lot of the bigots posting on this thread not only can't tell the difference between Arabs and Muslims" you're dishonestly giving only half of my quote, it continues "they insist that there is no difference." And certainly, insisting that all Arabs are Muslims -- in the face of glaring evidence to the contrary -- is bigoted.

And this is what I mean when I say you misrepresent my arguments. Because you do. You fill your snide, behind-the-back posts with voluminous lists of carefully selected half-truths designed to make me look bad. You do the same when you misrepresent historian Raffael Scheck's scholarship, as you have done several times on this thread, despite being corrected. Furthermore, you do it under the dishonest guise of "giving the full quote" and then doing the exact opposite.

I fully expect you to be rude to me. I am a bit perplexed why you are so disrepectful to Scheck and I am absolutely flabbergasted that you present yourself as a conscientious FReeper when you pollute these threads with mischaracterizations, half-truths, and general dishonesty.

Please stop. And if you won't. I'll ask the Moderators directly: Please make him stop.

[joan]

The boy was out of Srebrenica 2 years before the fall. His father stayed behind to fight until he got the orders to walk out. That's what the large Bosnian Muslim army of Srebrenica did - WALKED out before the Serbs even came (and their leadership, including Naser Oric, had left weeks earlier for Tuzla, and stayed away. The town was slated for abandonment.) It was a planned fall to divide the peoples more neatly in preparation for Dayton. Srebrenica and Zepa were islands in the mainly Serb controlled part of Bosnia.

What's more no kids of his age were killed. The "boys" said to be killed were those close to 18. Those 14 and under are considered children, not boys. Besides the number of boys appears to be only a small percentage with no autopsies showing who they were and how they died - landmines, fighting/skirmishes and accidents could easily be causes of death.

The boys entire immediate family is intact - he has both parents, healthy and uninjured, has 3 sisters too. None of them has any apparent scars, missing digits, limps, signs of malnutrition. One article also mentions that they lived in an abandoned Serb house in Tare. The article simply claims the Serbs left at the beginning of the war - as if they knew the details about the Serb family. Yet the Serb family could have been killed (one or more of its members), threatened or scared. And it doesn't appear the Serb family has ever come back either.

The Serbs were fleeing and displaced all during the war as well. It was a civil war started by separatists with heavy backing, guarantees, manipulations and promises by the west.

[lqclamar]

Another false personal attack by zimdog:

"I will kindly ask you to stop denigrating the service of troops who bravely fought the Nazis simply because you dislike their religion or their continent."

Noting the historical fact of their conscripted service and their small historical numbers is not "denigration," nor have I attacked African allied troops in WWII because of their continent. Much to the contrary, I praised the WWII service of a distinguished African spitfire pilot in Post #78 - http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1785542/posts?page=165#78

It should be noted that personal attacks such as zimdog's in the previous post are against the rules of FR.

[zimdog]

If you respond to my post, respond to me directly. eleni121 is banned or suspended, and in any case, was not the author of the post you're responding to. I suspect that you're purposefully putting other names in the "To:" field so that I won't be alerted to your attempts to refute my posts.

Yes, the Scheck quote clearly states that 100,000 Tirailleurs were sent to France between 3 Sept. 1939 and 25 June 1940. Of those 100,000 deployed from West Africa to France, only 2/3rds made it to the front lines in the Battle for France. It also states clearly that 122,000 people were mobilized in FWA before the armistice in the summer of 1940. The very next sentence then says that 275,354 Tirailleurs Senegalaise served in the colonial army during the war.

[joan]

Correction, the village was Bare, not Tare where he lived with his mom in a Serb home. They mention the home had nylon for a window which means it may have been broken or shot out by those who chased the Serbs away - or who at least looted and damaged their home after they left. But one wonders, without the names and interview of the former owners (and there's nothing to say these are known to the article writer), they could say for sure what happened to the Serb owners of the house.

"About 93 miles from Sarajevo, in the village of Bare, the Talovic family moved in 1994 for awhile to a small house with a dirt floor, no water, no electricity and a piece of nylon for a window. The house had belonged to a Serb family who had abandoned it when the war started."

[zimdog]

Noting the historical fact of their conscripted service and their small historical numbers is not "denigration," nor have I attacked African allied troops in WWII because of their continent. Much to the contrary, I praised the WWII service of a distinguished African spitfire pilot in Post #78

This leaves the possibility that you don't like their religion. Will you deny that possible reason for your irrational campaign against the service of so many West African Muslim soldiers?

[lqclamar]

1) Denigrating the service of decorated Allied soldiers because they happen to be African, Muslim, or conscripts. Is indeed a "wrongheaded, bigoted, or downright dangerous" idea.

Another personal attack by Zimdog against me. I have never denigrated allied soldiers for being African or muslim (in fact I praised an African WWII hero in post #78). Rather, I have simply sought a more accurate accounting of the numbers and roles of French colonial muslims on the allied side than has been given to date.

2) Donna does not believe the Baha'i concept of God is the same as the Christian and Jewish concept of God. This is the official Iranian position on the Baha'i faith.

Another personal attack by Zimdog against Donna. She is entitled to hold that religious belief without being slandered as a bigot or maliciously compared to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by zimdog

3) You have consistently downplayed the heroic service of Muslim Africans in World War 2 -- and African culture in general -- for no reason other than your personal dislike of the people or their religion.

Another false personal attack against me by zimdog. I have never insulted muslim African soldiers in WWII - merely demanded an accurate accounting of their numbers, roles, and contributions from a poster with a long history of fabricating those roles, fudging the numbers to suit his arguments, and using disreputable marxist internet sources to support them.

4) As mentioned before, eleni121 preferred to insult all World War 2 veterans rather than praise a Muslim. That's bigotry.

Another personal attack by Zimdog. Eleni121 made no such insult. Rather she simply asked for substantiation of questionable claims about the size and nature of muslim support for the allies in WWII and for that she was called a bigot by a poster with a long and documented history of personally attacking people with false allegations of "racism" and "bigotry."

5) When you say: Falsely accuses several freepers of bigotry - "A lot of the bigots posting on this thread not only can't tell the difference between Arabs and Muslims" you're dishonestly giving only half of my quote, it continues "they insist that there is no difference." And certainly, insisting that all Arabs are Muslims -- in the face of glaring evidence to the contrary -- is bigoted.

Another personal attack by Zimdog against multiple freepers. There are very few if any freepers out there denying that there's such a thing as a non-arab muslim. Zimdog invented this strawman slander to justify his personal attacks on other freepers.

And this is what I mean when I say you misrepresent my arguments. Because you do. You fill your snide, behind-the-back posts with voluminous lists of carefully selected half-truths designed to make me look bad.

Another long list of personal attacks by Zimdog against me.

Please stop. And if you won't. I'll ask the Moderators directly: Please make him stop.

...and an admission by Zimdog that his purpose here is not to discuss, but rather an effort to penalize any Freeper who disagrees with him or objects to his abusive and inflamatory personal attacks on them.

[zimdog]

The Serbs were fleeing and displaced all during the war as well. It was a civil war started by separatists with heavy backing, guarantees, manipulations and promises by the west.

I agree that he was not a victim of Srebrenica. Even if he was a witness or target, that is no excuse to shoot random innocent people in a shopping mall.

[lqclamar]

I do not intend to respond directly to a person who regularly defames me, attacks me personally on a regular basis, falsely accuses me of "bigotry," falsely accuses dozens of other freepers of "bigotry" and "racism," falsely accuses other freepers of supporting genocide and ethnic cleansing, and falsely insinuates that other freepers sympathize with Hitler, Mahmoud Ahmadenijad, and the government of Iran - all in direct violation of the no personal attacks rule - and then turns around and has the gall to frivolously report the very same people he is attacking for purported wrongs committed against him.

[Centurion2000]

You two sound like Ash and A+Bert going at each other with hammer and tongs.

Maybe both of you need to go have a drink or two and calm down.

My God, I'm the voice of reason here?

[lqclamar]

Frankly, I'd rather have nothing more to do with him. But earlier today he initiated a conscious effort to get me and another poster, Eleni121, in trouble with the Admin Moderators by making frivolous claims that we personally attacked him for challenging his political views in earlier posts. He is still making those frivolous claims as of a few minutes ago and has pinged the Admins dozens of times to this and other threads.

It was never my preference to involve the Admins or anyone else, but that's the path he clearly chose to pursue. And that is why I've documented his widespread use of personal attacks and defamatory insinuations against multiple other freepers, all in blatant violation of the very same FR rule he's accusing us of breaking.