Synagogue Hostage-Taker ID’d as ‘British National’ with ‘Mental Health Issues’

My latest in PJ Media:

The jihadi who held hostages for hours in a Texas synagogue Saturday, demanding the release of convicted terrorist Aafia Siddiqui, has been identified as a 44-year-old “British national” from Blackburn, Lancashire named Malik Faisal Akram. That is, however, about all the information the FBI has so far released, as efforts to whitewash and deny Akram’s motives continue.

The Blackburn Muslim Community requested that people “avoid taking part in the sin of backbiting” in talking about the case, which apparently meant that they didn’t want to see Akram being called a jihad terrorist. Akram’s brother Gulbar, meanwhile, condemned the attack and apologized: “We would like to say that we as a family do not condone any of his actions and would like to sincerely apologize wholeheartedly to all the victims involved in the unfortunate incident.” However, Gulbar also added that Malik Faisal Akram had “mental health issues.”

Of course. The claim that jihadis are suffering from mental illness is an excuse that authorities frequently employ in order to avoid having to speak publicly about aspects of Islamic teaching that can incite violence. In San Francisco last November, a knife-wielding Muslim screaming “Allahu akbar” charged at police, who shot him in self-defense. The establishment media insisted he was mentally ill. Also in November, a Muslim named Emad Al Swealmeen blew himself up in a taxicab outside a Liverpool hospital; police told the public that he suffered from periods of mental illness. In Germany, a Muslim migrant stabbed four random people, and although authorities acknowledged that he could be an “Islamic extremist,” he was placed not in a prison but in a psych ward.

And so on and on. For years now, authorities who feared doing anything that might suggest a connection between Islam and terrorism consigned numerous obvious instances of jihad activity to mental illness. If law enforcement officials take Gulbar’s claim at face value, this hostage-taking incident will quickly be forgotten amid a flurry of establishment media articles about the “stress” caused by “Islamophobia” and the need to redouble efforts to make sure Muslims suffer no undue difficulties.

Amid all this, a note of clarity came from the unlikeliest of sources: Joe Biden. Old Joe expectedly pretended that the hostage-taker’s motive was unclear, saying authorities “just don’t have enough facts” to explain why it all happened. Biden sputtered, “I don’t — we don’t have — I don’t think there is sufficient information to know about why he targeted that synagogue, why he insisted on the release of someone who’s been in prison for over 10 years, why he was engaged, why he was using an anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli comments.” After all this boilerplate, however, Biden actually spoke truthfully, calling the incident “an act of terror.”

There is more. Read the rest here.