I heard someone recently say, “We shouldn’t even bomb ISIS. Instead, we should be trying to figure out why young people are seeking to join up with them.”
The implication, of course, is that the United States is doing something wrong. People join groups like ISIS because the United States is bad, for unspecified reasons.
I call it the political and psychological equivalent of Original Sin. In other words, Americans are guilty merely because they are Americans — “just because,” and they should have to atone for it. Americans have more stuff. We’re fortunate to be born here. Of course, others who are not born here are angry and envious. We refuse to understand them, and in a sense we deserve what we get when they kill innocent people. So the excuse-making and moralizing goes.
What other mindset could explain the unwillingness to even fight back against militant Islam, despite all it has done to peaceful people, and no doubt will continue to do, particularly given our weakness?
Nevertheless, if you take such an attitude at its word, let’s explore the facts about a young man, Alexander Ciccolo, who was just arrested for planning to orchestrate ISIS-inspired violence in Boston.
CNN reports:
A Massachusetts man was arrested and charged in a plot to engage in terrorism on behalf of ISIS, according to a criminal complaint unsealed Monday in federal court.
Alexander Ciccolo, who also goes by Ali Al Amriki, was charged with felony possession of firearms, the U.S. attorney’s office in Massachusetts said.
His father, a Boston police captain, alerted authorities after Ciccolo made alarming comments, according to a law enforcement source. Robert Ciccolo has had minimal contact with his son since the younger Ciccolo turned 7, the source said.
“While we were saddened and disappointed to learn of our son’s intentions, we are grateful that authorities were able to prevent any loss of life or harm to others,” the family said in a statement, asking for privacy.
According to court documents, Alexander Ciccolo has a long history of mental illness and had become obsessed with Islam in the past 18 months.
Why are so many people with mental illness attracted to ISIS? Is there something about the radical Islamic ideology that draws people who suffer from gross disturbances in thought and sense perception? If so, what exactly is it?
And don’t say it’s because he had no contact with his father after the age of 7. Plenty of people have poor relationships with one or both parents; the vast majority do not become cold-blooded, ISIS-loving killers. Don’t insult those individuals by feeling sorry for Alexander Ciccolo.
We’re told, over and over, that Islam is a beautiful and peaceful ideology. We’re also told that Muslims are simply angry at American arrogance, as demonstrated by drilling for oil so that human beings — not just America, but any society willing to industrialize itself — may function and flourish beyond the level of primitive savages, and have a shot at living beyond the age of twenty.
Our President and Secretary of State sternly lecture us for even insinuating that Islamic ideology might be a big part of the problem. To even suggest such a thing is considered “racist.” Yet mentally ill people with appetites for violence and control are repeatedly drawn to Islam. They find something familiar and workable in it. Ciccolo is just the latest example. Why aren’t we talking about this? What are we afraid of, by avoiding the subject?
Every time something like this happens — mentally disturbed person embraces radical Islam — we never have a conversation about what’s drawing these mentally disturbed people to that particular religion. Yet when it comes time to propose military action against ISIS or countries who support and sponsor terrorism, like Iran, we’re told, “Military responses are not the answer. We have to understand our enemies. We are not at war with Islam.” Even though most of Islam appears to be at war with us.
It seems to me that people like this disturbed and depraved young man in Boston understand Islam perfectly well. And that’s why they’re drawn to it.
Ciccolo allegedly said he was inspired by ISIS and wanted to set off homemade bombs such as pressure cookers filled with black powder, ball bearings and glass in places where a large number of people gather, including a college cafeteria.
Ciccolo explained that if a student was Muslim, then that student would be permitted to help, sit or leave, according to court documents. He allegedly said he wanted to carry out the attack before Ramadan was over, and no later than July 31.
“We win or we die,” Ciccolo is accused of saying.
It’s a revealing statement: “We win or we die.” Islam is an ideology of explicit death. Either you foster death and destruction against innocent people who wish to lead their lives in meaningful ways; or you die. Death is the ultimate outcome, and nothing else matters to radical Muslims. Death is both the means and the end.
This is the mindset of a seriously depressed person. And also a delusional, deeply hostile and violently insecure person.
A seriously depressed person recognizes that everyone will die eventually, anyway, and emotionally concludes: so what does it all matter? To a fundamentalist Muslim (like other sociopaths), it’s important not just to believe that life is unimportant, but to impose this belief on everyone else. For a depressed person with violent, angry tendencies, militant Islam is the perfect answer. “I’m out of here. And I’m taking you with me.”
When such madness arises from anything other than radical Islam, we’re not afraid to call it what it is. For some inexplicable reason, we tiptoe around the issue that Islam is aiding and abetting the madness in cases like that of Alexander Ciccolo. This cowardly, self-conscious and anti-intellectual form of political correctness is not only unhealthy, but dangerous. To excuse the reasons for a killer’s objectives is to enable them.
By the way, this is not an argument for censorship. It’s actually the Muslims who favor Sharia Law, and their lefitst progressive supporters, who want censorship imposed on those who disagree. What I am advocating is calling a spade a spade. It’s healthy, it’s accurate, and it’s what our survival actually requires, in the case of militant Islam.
Fortunately for the individuals who will not die from this particular Islamic terrorist’s plans for Boston, the police and this young man’s family were willing to call him on his behavior, and hold him accountable for it. Imagine that. Justice and safety above political correctness and what they call “sensitivity.”
Why would a young person be drawn to such an ideology? Because it fits with his already emotionally-driven conclusion that life does not matter.
There’s little else to understand here. Islam is out to destroy Western civilization, meaning anything and everything that’s not Islamic. Young people like Alexander Ciccolo aren’t drawn to Islam so much as they’re reacting against American society. Why? Because American society is about life on this earth, life for its own sake, and freedom and individualism. There will always be a type of person who cannot stand these things. Most do not become violent. But some do, and Islam provides the perfect rationalization and metaphysical fantasy system for doing so.
When we stop making excuses for radical Islam, and start holding its proponents accountable for their actions, as Ciccolo’s own family did, then we’ll finally be on our way to defeating it.
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