In yet another sickening display of violence in the United States last week, a young American murdered four US Marines and a Navy petty officer in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
I don’t pretend to know what was in Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez’s heart when he went on his shooting rampage. We can’t be certain if it was an act of terrorism influenced by Daesh, although we now know that he cited Islamic verses on his blog. But this attack is more puzzling than other acts of violence perpetrated in the US and Europe by young Muslims because there is no clear link between Abdulazeez and Daesh and no overt religious motive.
What Abdulazeez represents is another tragic example of disaffected youth looking for meaning in their lives. As Abdulazeez mentioned in one post, he felt that he was living in a prison of monotony and routine. This is one likely explanation why three teenage British girls traveled from London to join Daesh in Syria to become extremists’ brides, or the more than 1,500 British men joining the fight to become what they describe as martyrs.
Non-Muslims who make a living as critics of Islam blame religion as a motive for murder. Muslims complain our young brothers and sisters deliberately misinterpret Islam as a convenient way to commit violent acts. But we ignore that society in both the West and the East has failed young people worldwide. There is a tendency to hold Muslims to a higher standard. Somehow committing murder in the name of religion gives Muslims special status as killers.
It’s this attention focused on violent extremists that have led to the profound erosion of civil liberties in the West. One no longer needs to commit a crime to be arrested in England. Simple support of extremist ideology is sufficient to be locked up without charges. Intelligence agencies in many countries collect Internet users’ electronic data. And an estimated 6 million surveillance cameras keep a close watch on all Britons.
The focus on extremists committing violent acts in the United States and Europe has been so intense that governments have completely lost sight of what leads young people to kill on such a massive scale.
If Abdulazeez were not Muslim he would be viewed in law enforcement circles in a different light. In fact, Abdulazeez shares the characteristics as other mass killers: Anders Breivik (anti-social behavior, right-wing views) who killed 77 people in 2011; Adam Lanza (anti-social behavior and isolation), who shot and killed 26 children and adult staff members at a Newtown, Connecticut, school; brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev (unstable domestic lives), who killed three people in the Boston marathon bombing in 2013; and Dylann Roof (anti-social), who shot to death nine African-Americans at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Abdulazeez had a July 30 court date on charges of drunken driving and driving under the influence of a controlled substance. He also reportedly failed a drug test that resulted in his firing from a job at a nuclear power plant. His mother accused his father of domestic abuse. By all accounts Abdulazeez, who was born in Kuwait to Palestinian parents, had assimilated well in American society and was outwardly social. Yet he clearly struggled with a lack of direction and an unstable home life as he reached adulthood.
Modern society, coupled with the age of the Internet, has made our lives more comfortable. It also comes at a heavy price. We have greater access to hate websites that promote misogyny and racial, ethnic and religious hatred that are conveniently delivered to disaffected individuals living on the margins of society. In the United States in particular they also have greater access to guns. It’s a toxic combination.
It makes more sense that society at the local level, through educators and social services, helps parents identify at-risk children. Extremist ideology, whether religious or racial, will never disappear. But we can minimize its influence with early detection. Abdulazeez, Breivik, Lanza, the Tsarnaev brothers and Roof all could have benefited from early intervention. However, their neighbors, family and teachers chose to ignore the signs that were clearly apparent.
Rather than pass draconian anti-terror laws, perhaps social services should be given a greater role to implement policies that concentrate on identification and intervention to minimize dangerous behavior.
