The (take your pick) mentally ill individual/evil Muslim terrorist who shot six at the Seattle Jewish Federation, killing one, recently converted to Christianity, according to a Seattle Post-Intelligencer report.
Naveed Haq, now widely portrayed as a Muslim American so angry at Israel that he shot up a Jewish charity in Seattle, had recently converted to Christianity. His conversion is perhaps the most startling contradiction in a puzzling life.
Clearly, this proves that Christians hate America and that there is an organized effort to kill Jews among Christians and that Haq was part of it. Sure, sure–most Christians don’t murder Jews. But many do. There’s a long history of Jew-hating Christians going way back, from the earliest days of the church right up to Mel Gibson. And now this.
Either that, or this is just a tragic crime committed by a mentally ill person. That was my original take on this but, the more I read on the conservative blogs, the more wrong I knew I must be.
Of course, the SPI story could be wrong, in which case it would prove that the press is aligned with the terrorists and confirm that Haq was indeed a Muslim terrorist–probably very high in the al Qaeda hierarchy. Perhaps even the 13th 9/11 hijacker.
UPDATE: Michelle Malkin is upset with the “moonbats” pointing to this story (hat tip: Florida Masochist). She notes that she linked to an earlier SPI story over the weekend which also included the fact that Haq “attended the Islamic Center of Tri-Cities mosque two weeks ago.”
She also points to a Wikipedia piece on Taqiyya (which may or may not rhyme with “Reconquista”): “In Shi’a Islamic tradition, Taqiyya (التقية – ‘fear, guard against’)[1] is the dispensation allowing Muslims to conceal their faith when under threat, persecution or compulsion.” The implication that he was baptised to avoid being murdered or persecuted strikes me, to say the least, as implausible. It’s much more likely that Haq was a very confused young man trying to sort through that confusion.
More interestingly, Malkin points to a new statement from the Seattle police which indicates that Taq apparently planned his crime quite well. That’s not particularly surprising–it was carried out with sufficient precision that prior planning was evident. Still, it would seem to vitiate any claims that Taq simply “snapped” and seized a target of opportunity. This was a premediated attempt at mass murder, regardless of whether Taq was mentally stable.
Malkin’s Hot Air colleague Bryan Preston adds, “The guy identified himself as a Muslim when he opened fire and used that identification to justify his actions, actions which find justification in the Koran but not in the New Testament.” Centuries of people persecuted in the name of Christianity might disagree with the second part of that statement. That he “identified himself as a Muslim” at the time of the shooting is indeed relevant and perhaps a sign that the baptism didn’t “take.” (As if attempted mass murder weren’t sufficient.)
Regular readers of the site–including those who read my first post on this case–know that I believe radical Islamist teaching is much more widespread than a simple lunatic fringe. Islam has not undergone the modernist transformation that Christianity went through centuries ago with the Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Reformation. The amount of organized violence committed by non-fringe Christian groups pales in comparison to that committed by Islamists.
Still, I don’t see a terrorist hiding under every tree. It is simultaneously true that we have an “Islamist problem” and that most Muslims–even most Muslim murderers–are not part of it. And when a guy with a history of mental illness, whose previous criminal history is limited to whipping out his private parts in public, kills someone, my first response is not “I wonder what religion he follows?”
UPDATE: Some parallels to the Mel Gibson case occur to me. Both had crazy dads who raised them in the ways of a crackpot religious sects. Taq has a “history of mental illness” whereas Gibson had a history of alcoholism. Both have some rather strong antipathy toward the Jews. That Taq decided to buy guns and kill Jews while Gibson merely got drunk and spouted some nonsense strikes me as having much more to do with what kind of men they are than which church they attended.
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