We hear a lot about Islamic terrorists who are allegedly self radicalised who then go on to kill and maim seemingly out of the blue. Whilst self radicalisation may be a phenomenon that is partially true, there are some Islamic radicals who show obvious signs of being dangerous, but those around them do little or nothing to stop those radicals from committing terrorist atrocities.
An enquiry into a terrorist outrage in France, that resulted in the death of a police officer and three other innocent people, has revealed that those around the murdering savage Radouane Lakdim knew he was radicalising but didn’t take things seriously enough to contact the security authorities. This is a revelation that should worry not just the security services in France but citizens of all European nations where Islamic radicalisation is a problem.
Breitbart said:
A new report has claimed that friends and relatives of Trebes supermarket terrorist Radouane Lakdim knew well before the attack that he had become radicalised and even threatened attacks but never contacted police.
The report comes after ten months of investigation into what led up to the attack which saw the 25-year-old French-Moroccan terrorist murder four people including police officer Lieutenant Colonel Arnaud Beltrame, who offered himself in exchange for hostages.
According to the report, the former girlfriend of Lakdim, labelled by the initials “KM”, claimed that he had told her that he wanted to “die as a martyr” and was planning to visit French broadcaster BFMTV to “blow everything up”, adding: “He is a psychopathic terrorist.”
I can understand although not condone those close to this savage not running to the police merely because he expressed extremist views, lots of people have views that could be called extremist, but often the words of such extremists are merely empty bluster. They are like the ‘it’s all a Zionist plot’ types you see on social media who are mostly sound and fury signifying bugger all. However in this case, those close to Lakdim knew that he wanted to engage in violence and expressed desires to be a suicide terrorist which in my view crosses the line that divides that which can be relatively safely let slide and behaviour which should be acted upon and reported.
Some of the things that Lakdim has been claimed to have said or done were major red flags. No normal person, whether they are a political extremist or not sleeps with a pistol under their pillow especially in nations like France which has less of a gun owning culture than some other nations. Similarly it takes someone extremely disturbed or who is supremely confident that they will not get grassed up to flash weapons around and speak openly of particular terrorist targets. Lakdim seemingly showed all the signs that he was going to ‘go off’ and carry out a terrorist act, yet nobody spoke up, nobody gossiped and nobody informed the police about how badly he was going off the rails.
Although it is quite possible that Lakdim may have intimidated people into silence, this case does raise the possibility that there may be more going on here than just intimidation. One possibility is that support among the peer group of Lakdim and those like him for Islamic radicalism may be much more widespread than many may assume. If that is the case then Europe’s citizens may be in much more danger from Islamic terrorism than they may believe they are.
Much store has been put by various governments in Europe in the policy of ‘see something, say something’ when it comes to countering terrorism, but in the Lakdim case people saw a considerable amount that was concerning but said absolutely sod all. This case is an example of how ‘see something, say something’ has completely broken down.
If those close to extremists and the communities that these extremists and terrorists are coming from are not speaking up, then it means that these terrorists are not being interdicted before they kill. Now before readers think that I mean ‘all’ Muslims are turning a blind eye to terrorism and extremism, I am not saying this, There have been reports, such as one from the Australian outlet ABC, that claim that many Muslims are opposed to terror and this may be due to the fact that the vast majority of the victims of Islamic terror are Muslims themselves. I don’t entirely agree with the ABC author’s view that Islamic terror could easily be Maoist terror or nationalist terror as Islamic terror does have a distinctly Islamic flavour and an Islamic end goal. But the author may well be correct in their statement that there are a lot of Muslims who want nothing to do with murderous extremism. In Britain for example the current head of the Metropolitan Police, Cressida Dick, has claimed that more normal Muslims are reporting extremist behaviour then ever before, something I believe is a very good thing.
But, cases like the Lakdim one feed a suspicion among non Muslims that all Muslims are turning a blind eye to terrorism and are not turning in Islamic extremists to the police or security forces. There are of course likely to be some groups of Muslims who are not doing their duty by their nations and reporting suspicious co-religionists. They may be doing this for reasons or misplaced loyalty at one end of the scale or support for Islamic terror at the other. Those Muslims who are not reporting extremism undermine the efforts of the peaceful Muslims, and they do exist, who want nothing to do with extremism and terrorism. Too many of these incidents where those around extremists fail to speak up or speak to the authorities will give credence to the social meme that Muslims will not report on Islamic extremists.
‘See something, say something’ is a good policy when it comes to tackling terrorism and extremism. However it is a policy that will only work if enough people who see extremism speak up against it and report to the authorities those in their community who express a desire to kill in the name of their religion.
The fact that nobody surrounding Lakdim thought to speak up or try to dissuade him from extremism or report his terror inclinations to the police is worrying. What bothers me is that the situation where people see something but say nothing will only get worse as extremism grows and is able to intimidate more Muslims into silence. It’s vital that Islamic extremism is broken before things get to the stage where the extremists are able to bully and intimidate those around them into saying nothing when they should be saying something.
