When Alton Nolen, alias Jah’Keem Yisrael, beheaded a co-worker at a food processing plant in Moore, Oklahoma, the FBI responded by downplaying any terrorist threat and dubbing the incident one of “workplace violence.”
This has naturally caused controversy, especially given the almost simultaneous arrest of another man who who openly identified with the Islamic State terrorist group and threatened to behead a co-worker in nearby Oklahoma City. Is the FBI encouraging complacency or deceiving the public about an important risk?
Considering how quick people are to panic over other supposed causes of violence — television, video games, and even harmless political rhetoric about “targeting” opponents — those seeking to suppress discussion of Nolen’s brand of Islamic ideology seem either childish or patronizing. They either sincerely avert their eyes so as not to see, or they fear that if the topic is mentioned in public, their benighted neighbors will reflexively burn the nearest Muslim at the stake.
Fortunately, American adults (including American Muslims) are not nearly so violent or incapable of making rational distinctions. Americans understand that it would be ridiculous to damn an entire world religion or blame its 1.6 billion adherents for the acts of a single fanatical prison convert.
Yet it would be equally silly to ignore the fact that beheadings are both uncommon in Oklahoma and characteristic of precisely the brand of Islamic fanaticism in which Nolen had evidently steeped himself. He was enamored of Islamic terrorists, posting to Facebook images of Osama bin Laden and of an apparent beheading, along with anti-American propaganda and a Quranic verse (subject to much interpretation) about beheading the enemies of Islam in battle.
In this context, the question of workplace violence versus terrorism seems like the wrong one. The FBI is primarily interested in whether Nolen had global terrorist ties (there is no evidence of that). But lone wolves are also considered terrorists when their crimes or their brutality are ideological in nature. One need not have spent time at an al Qaeda training camp or even had direct contact with terrorist groups to have been inspired by their toxic ideology.
The proximate cause of Nolen’s crime appears to be his firing. But that Nolen reacted to it by beheading a random co-worker cannot be unrelated to his ideology. Before this, his most violent crime had been the shoving of a police officer while attempting to escape arrest.
This discussion is an important one to have — not to find a scapegoat, but to understand root causes and uproot them. The Islamic world has not always been as infected with violent ideology as it is today, and it need not always be. Groups like Islamic State and al Qaeda took their cue from decades of state-sponsored (to the tune of $10 billion) propaganda in the Arab world that pushed an extreme and ideological brand of Islam. The terrorists have taken it even further to its extreme conclusions.
For westerners seeking peaceful coexistence with the Islamic world — which is to say, for all Americans of good will — the conversation about stopping the propaganda and counteracting the ideology is vital to the future. For those who prefer to ignore the threat, they needn’t be offended, as one cannot hear with one’s head in the sand.
