Posted on 09/17/2007 5:43:12 AM PDT by SJackson
Houssein Zorkot, a third-year medical student at Wayne State University in Michigan, was arrested on September 8 at Hemlock Park in Detroit. He was wearing camouflage makeup, black clothes, and carrying an AK-47 assault rifle; he reportedly had to be tasered by police when he was arrested. His website features photographs of the Ayatollah Khomeini and a great deal of pro-Hizballah material. Most ominously, on the day he was arrested he uploaded onto his site an image that included a photo of a soldier holding a rifle, with the caption, “The Start of My Personal Jihad (in the US).” Underneath in Arabic was Qur’an 9:20: “Those who believe, and have left their homes and striven with their wealth and their lives in Allah’s way are of much greater worth in Allah’s sight. These are they who are triumphant.” The Arabic for “striven…in Allah’s way” is jahadoo fi sabil Allah, which in Islamic theology refers in particular to jihad as warfare.
The start of Zorkot’s personal jihad will have to wait; he is being held on $1 million dollar bond. But his case carries some troubling implications. According to Michigan’s WLNS, police say that on his website Zorkot claims to be a member of Hizballah. If that claim is true, was his abortive personal jihad in Hemlock Park ordered by Hizballah leadership? If so, and if Zorkot had succeeded in murdering anyone in the park, his attack would have been the first known strike by Hizballah on U.S. soil. Even though unsuccessful, Zorkot’s attack, if it was a Hizballah project, would signal an end to the terror group’s policy of not staging attacks in America because the reaction to such an attack would hinder the group’s freedom of action here. Last April, Thomas Fuentes, special agent in charge of the FBI’s International Operations, explained that Hizballah wants to “maintain a low profile by engaging in criminal activity [but] not direct attacks….They’ve not been enthusiastic about doing it on US soil because of the attention and reaction that would occur.” But if Zorkot went to Hemlock Park on Hizballah orders, those days are over -- and Americans can brace themselves for more Hizballah operations here.
It may be, of course, that even if Zorkot really is a Hizballah member, he was not acting on orders from the organization, but was freelancing when he took his AK-47 to Hemlock Park. Police and FBI officials have not given any indication as to whether or not Zorkot was on their radar screen before the incident last week, or whether or not they knew him to be affiliated with Hizballah – if indeed he is. And a third possibility is that Zorkot is, contrary to his claim, not a Hizballah member at all.
These possibilities are no less ominous than the first, for they would place Zorkot among the growing list of Muslims with no known connections to any terrorist group who suddenly go on a murderous rampage. Some of these recent incidents include Naveed Afzal Haq’s July 28, 2006 shootings at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle. After forcing his way into the building, Haq announced, “I’m a Muslim American; I’m angry at Israel,” and then began firing, killing one woman and injuring five more. Two months earlier, a twenty-two-year-old Iranian student named Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar drove an SUV onto the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, deliberately trying to kill people and succeeding in injuring nine. After the incident, he seemed singularly pleased with himself, smiling and waving to crowds after a court appearance on Monday, at which he explained that he was “thankful for the opportunity to spread the will of Allah.” Officials here again dismissed the possibility of terrorism, even after Taheri-azar wrote a series of letters to the UNC campus newspaper detailing the Qur’anic justification for warfare against unbelievers, and explaining why he believed his attacks were justified from an Islamic perspective.
Neither Haq nor Taheri-azar were members of any terror group. They had never done anything to come to the attention of law enforcement officials before. Law enforcement attention, meanwhile, has been focused almost exclusively on known members of terror groups, with scant attention given to the ideology of Islamic supremacism and jihad that can inspire any lone individual to wage jihad on his own. Taheri-azar’s painstakingly detailed arguments demonstrate that the Qur’an’s exhortations to warfare can still be lethal whenever taken seriously by Muslims. Muslims who profess to reject jihad violence should have no problem combating, in cooperation with non-Muslim authorities, the ideology that fuels it. Yet FBI Director Robert Mueller recently revealed, according to journalist Bill Gertz, that “the FBI has no counterideology response other than its ‘outreach’ to Muslim-American communities so they ‘understand the FBI’ and address ‘the radicalization issue.’” Gertz noted that “Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff also said nothing is being done domestically to battle Islamist extremist ideas.”
This is a battle that must be fought. Whether or not Houssein Zorkot proves to be among their ranks, it is highly likely that there will be more freelance jihadists. The American Muslim advocacy establishment, for all its anti-terror protestations, have not, even now six years after 9/11, instituted comprehensive and transparent programs in American mosques to teach against the jihad ideology. Such programs will not end the possibility of freelance jihadists, but at least it would be a beginning, and a most welcome show of good faith from some organizations whose commitment to anti-terror efforts has come under increasing suspicion.
The fact that this beginning has not been made by Muslim groups in the U.S., or called for by government and law enforcement, is yet another manifestation of the pitfalls of ignoring the ideological dimensions of Islamic jihad terrorism. As freelance incidents grow in number, American officials will find the luxury of ignoring the jihad ideology ever more costly.
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I'm surprised we haven't heard CAIR defending this islamawhacko. That he is a third-year med student is all the more alarming. Apparently no amount of education is sufficient inoculation against the islama-whacko virus.
see http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070917/NEWS05/709170405/1001/NEWS for the usual excuses
Has any gov’t org made the obligatory “does not appear to be a terrorists act” yet?
Bump for an important article by one of the best writers on Islamonazism currently writing.
More on Hussein Zarkot (and thanks for pings to previous articles on this story)....
Thanks so much for posting. Hooray Robert Spencer! One of the best educators that I have ever had. Thank you, sir.
Like Haq & Taheri-azar, does this fool suffer from Temporary Jihadi Insanity? He may have gotten Affirmative Action breaks, but how could someone bright enough for Med school be stupid enough to wave an AK around in a park while wearing camouflage makeup, black clothes, and non-white skin? Don’t add up, do it?
Does anyone out there actually believe we havent been hit since 911 ??? Maybe not on a grand scale, but these little probing cuts are starting to add up...
SJS. Sudden Jihad Syndrome.
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