Lost Souls, Dead Souls

 Although federal, state and local authorities are still assembling evidence to determine the exact motives and operations of the recent terrorist attack by a young Muslim couple in San Bernardino, California, it seems doubtful, based on what the newspapers have reported so far, that it was a coordinated attack by the Islamic State of the Levant (ISIL or ISIS).

What is certain is this:

 

   The wife, Tashfeen Malik, was a Pakistani who had lived in Saudi Arabia, where friends said she had become so extremely conservative and religious that she began to isolate herself from not just friends and relatives, but society.

·   Her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, was born in Chicago to parents who emigrated from Pakistan more than a quarter century earlier, a college graduate and gainfully employed in Southern California – an American.

·   The two married in August 2014, Farook having met his wife in an arrangement, either through an Internet marriage service or an agreement between their two families, exactly which remains unclear.

·    After their marriage, Farook seemed to have joined his wife in living an isolated life, even leaving the mosque where he once prayed a few months before he and Malik went on their killing spree of Farook’s 14 co-workers.

·    Authorities believe the couple received two weapons, the military style rifles, from a friend and neighbor of Farook’s, Enrique Marquez. Other neighbors say Marquez and Farook had an abiding interest, cars, and were often seen working on them.

·   Since the incident Marquez has checked himself into a mental health clinic. He has not been charged with a crime.

·   The other two weapons the couple possessed, like the rifles, were most likely easily and legally purchased in another state, which makes California’s strict gun laws weak at best. The bomb-making materials the couple had amassed for their pipe bombs are easily and legally purchased on the market.

·   Just before Malik and Farook started killing, Malik went on Facebook and professed loyalty to ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. To date, authorities have found no link between the terrorist group and the couple. ISIL has praised the couple as “supporters,” but have not claimed to have planned and coordinated the attack as they did for the Paris killings.

 
With these facts taken together it appears the San Bernardino terrorist attack was not part of ISIL or al-Qaeda or the Taliban or any other terrorist group with death-cult ambitions to rule to world.

What does seem plausible in the murkiness of this early investigation is a young couple, in their late 20s, chose to live an isolated existence, far from a support network of family and friends that could help them see a better world for themselves and their six-month-old daughter, who they left with Farooks’ mother on the way to conduct their killing.

What could have driven a young, educated couple with every hope and dream before them to choose murder and death over life?  

Perhaps the clues are in the facts, and one fact that continues to appear in all these terrorist incidents related to people who practice an extreme form of Islam is a Middle East nation – Saudi Arabia, a country ruled by a royal family whose wealth is, to the average person, unimaginable. Most of the 9/11 terrorists came from Saudi Arabia, where freedom of religion, other than the practice of Islam, is forbidden, and the brand of Islam the Saud’s allow is Wahhabism, an extremely ultra conservative doctrine that imposes such quaint strictures as forbidding women to drive to such brutal and archaic punishment as beheading criminals. As in any ultra conservative religion, there is no room to think for oneself in Wahhabism – only to obey or face harsh penalties.

Outside the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Wahhabism, like any religion, is practiced to varying degrees by its adherents, from casually obedience to obeying every word without question.

In this respect, Islam is not unlike other religions. In the United States, where devotion to any religion including Christianity is on the wane, the same type of ideological thinking exists in conservative churches as it does in conservative mosques.

Take, for example, the recent words about San Bernardino from Jerry Falwell Jr., president of Liberty University, a conservative Christian school: “I’ve always thought that if more good people had concealed-carry permits, then we could end those Muslims before they walked in,” according to the Washington Post.
 
Falwell’s comments are interesting, if not disturbing, in that he speaks from a pulpit to promote unfettered gun ownership and use to the young followers of a conservative brand of Christianity. Falwell’s comment earned their roar of approval. As  polls now demonstrate, belief in owning a gun has for gun owners become an ideology, which is as fervent as those who hold deep religious beliefs that say one must be pure in the eyes of the Lord, or that  killing is required of all non-believers, or that abortion clinics should be attacked.
 
While we tremble at the thought of terrorism and its fear-mongering images of beheadings, we are not considering what is actually happening at home and abroad. It is a clash of ideologies – religious and secular – between moderate and conservative Muslims against a rapidly changing world in which technology challenges long-held beliefs. It is a battle for Middle East hegemony between that region’s dominant powers, Iran and Saudi Arabia.  Some intelligence analysts believe the Saud’s are helping Sunni ISIS battle the Shiite Iranians.  That seems apparent.

ISIL’s aspiration for a worldwide Caliph is as delusional as any other ideology that seeks world domination. Cults of death don't seem to have much staying power because everyone dies.

We may never know why Malik and Farook killed 14 people in a San Bernardino municipal building. They appear to have been two lost souls who chose to join a legion of dead souls that believe death and murder is better than living with imperfection.
 
We do know this: religious extremism – no matter what the faith – and diehard beliefs (oppose any gun regulation in the name of the Second Amendment) leaves no room for humanity.