All of us - FBI included - want to make sense of these events with some kind of logic that fits together like a lego set. In my opinion, we are ignoring the main component - mental illness.
In many of these cases there appears to be a mental illness at play that makes these individuals especially vulnerable to Jihadist tendencies as an outlet for their illness. It provides the perfect vehicle for a deluded person to attain some misguided form of self-validation. They see their lives as being without meaning (they are generally losers with erratic behavior and history) and this action changes that in their twisted minds.
It does not fit each case, but I have read the same opinion from those who have the most experience with it - the Israeli’s. The preachers of hate find the most obedient receptacle of their hate in the weakest vessels.
“All of us - FBI included - want to make sense of these events with some kind of logic that fits together like a lego set. In my opinion, we are ignoring the main component - mental illness.”
Could be called mental illness...but this presupposes that we possess a system of logic and reasoning and evaluation capable of categorizing or characterizing the topic matter. I view it slightly differently and with respect, there is a certain amount of arrogance in what you suggest. The arrogance is the insistence that our system of logic and and belief and thought (our “machine”) is superior in the sense that we think we can apply it to Islam, turn the crank, and get our “conclusion(s)” that we believe are correct.
The Islamists feed our system into their “machine”, turn the crank, and get out 371 variations of “murderous hatred and certain intent”.
The conundrum is that the result of our calculus is “a better understanding”. The result of their calculus is our heads, yours and mine, severed from our bodies, both lying in a pool of blood.
It is like developing a system for betting on a game and deriving a near perfect system that accurately predicts results on an uncannily accurate basis yet results in gradually losing your entire stake.
We will be right about them, right about them, right about them, but if we do not develop the system that produces their destruction, their results will beat ours.