Sometimes things aren’t as simple as they seem, but there are parallels that can unlock the secret to understanding. I know, that was a very nebulous statement but just give me your attention and I’ll make it all plain.
Folks are concerned about the fatal shooting of a Muslim cleric in New York City’s Queens Borough. And without a doubt there are those who probably want this to be an act conducted by a white male so they can declare “Islamophobia” and decry hate crimes.
Now if you haven’t been paying attention, Reuters reports, “New York City police searched on Sunday for a suspect in the shooting of a Muslim cleric and his associate killed while walking together along a city street after attending prayers at a nearby mosque, authorities said.
A lone gunman approached the men from behind and shot both in the head at close range at about 1:50 p.m. EDT (1350 ET) on Saturday afternoon in the Ozone Park neighborhood in Queens, police said in a statement.
They cited witnesses statements and video surveillance footage for details of the attack in the largely working-class area, home to many Muslims of Bangladeshi heritage.
Witnesses told police they saw the assailant, dressed in a dark shirt and blue shorts, fleeing the shooting scene with a gun in his hand, police said. Early on Sunday, police released a sketch of a male suspect with dark hair, a beard and glasses. Police described him as having a medium complexion. He appeared to be in his 30’s or 40’s.
Health Sciences Institute.
The victims, identified as Imam Maulama Akonjee, 55, and Thara Uddin, 64, were both wearing religious garb at the time of shooting, police said. They were found by police lying in the street and transported to a local hospital where they were pronounced dead. The motive for the shooting was not immediately known and no evidence has been uncovered that the two men were targeted because of their faith, but police were not ruling out any possibility, a department spokeswoman said.”
The political long knives are already out seeking to blame this shooting on one Donald J. Trump. I’ve heard it mentioned several times that it’s his “rhetoric” against Muslims that has contributed to this type of anti-Muslim atmosphere. Funny… Trump got throttled for saying that Obama and Clinton were the founder and co-founder of ISIS. But did we already forget Hillary Clinton’s castigating Trump as the best recruiter for ISIS last December? Not a peep from the media then. So I recommend the liberal progressive media let the investigation take its course and I’m quite sure the assailant will be found.
In fact today, a man was arrested in connection with the murder. The New York Daily News reports, The killer who crept up behind an imam and his friend near a Queens mosque and shot both men in the head may have been settling a score in a feud between Muslims and Hispanics, police sources said early Monday.
Sources pointed to an ongoing feud between Muslims and Hispanics in the neighborhood, saying the shooting may have been payback after a group of Muslims allegedly attacked some Hispanics a few weeks earlier.
The killer’s prowess got cops’ attention.
“This guy looks like he has shot a gun before. You don’t walk up behind someone, even from 5 feet, and just get two head shots. How many times you see cops fire 16 times and they hit the guy only twice?” a police source said.
Man questioned in NYC imam’s murder
That’s all we know about the suspect right now. But there’s another angle to pursue in this case that occurred earlier this year in Scotland.As reported by the Gatestone Institute, “Earlier this year there was a murder that shocked Britain. Just before Easter, a 40-year old shopkeeper in Glasgow, Asad Shah, was repeatedly stabbed in his shop; he died in the road outside.
The news immediately went out that this was a religiously-motivated attack. But the type of religiously motivated attack it was came as a surprise to most of Britain. There’s so much attention paid to the idea of “Islamophobia” in the country that many people — including some Muslim groups — immediately assumed that the killing of Asad Shah was an “Islamophobic” murder.
It turned out, however, that the man who had been detained by police — and this week sentenced to a minimum of 27 years in prison for the murder — was also a Muslim. Mr Shah was an Ahmadiyya Muslim — that is, a member of the peaceable Islamic sect which is dismissed as “heretical” by many Muslims.
Mr Shah’s murderer, on the other hand, was a Sunni Muslim, Tanveer Ahmed, who had travelled up from Bradford to kill Mr Shah because he believed Mr Shah had “disrespected the Prophet Mohammed.” At this point the comfortable narratives of modern Britain began to fray. Of course, if Mr Shah’s murderer had been a non-Muslim, there would be a concerted effort by the entirety of the media and political class to find out what inspirations and associations the murderer had. Specifically, they would want to know if there was anybody — especially any figure of authority — who had ever, for instance, called for the murder of Muslim shopkeepers.
Yet when a British Muslim kills another British Muslim for alleged “apostasy,” and local religious authorities are found to have praised or mourned the killers of people accused of “apostasy,” the same people cannot bother to stir themselves. There is talk of being “taken out of context” or there are warnings not to “generalise” or be “Islamophobic” or any number of other fatuous get-out clauses. What happened this week in court when Tanveer Ahmed was found guilty and sentenced for the murder of Asad Shah was even more revealing. After the judge read out the sentence, Tanveer Ahmed raised his fist and started shouting in Arabic “There is only one prophet.”
So let’s look at this hypothetically…What if Imam Akonjee had done something deemed as going against the ummah (Muslim community) such as perhaps, cooperating with local law enforcement? Perhaps the Imam had spoken out about the recent Islamic terror attacks in Bangladesh and took a more peaceful tone.
Maybe this Imam had the courage to stand up and denounce Islamic jihadism and, as we know with Islam, if you’re deemed an “apostate,” the punishment is death. The parallels are very clear between the case in Scotland and the murder investigation in Queens in that everyone wants to immediately rush to a case of “Islamophobia” without considering all the facts, and possibilities.
There’s the possibility that this could be all about an internal dispute, an issue within the Muslim community itself. We need to learn more about the Imam and some of the recent positions or sermons he had delivered.
They could have indeed been targeted for their faith, but not for the simple reasons we believe. If we don’t seek to better understand the intricacies and nuances of Islam, we’ll go into cases such as this with blinders, not having a full perspective.
In Scotland, Tanveer Ahmed killed the simple, peaceful Muslim store owner Asad Shah because he didn’t adhere to a strict Islamic jurisprudence — as embraced by Wahhabists, Salafists and Deobandists (yes, I live a boring life and study these things). And I would suggest since we have such a PC Western culture, we’d best start to comprehend these respective schools of jurisprudence in Islam, as well as the schism between Sunni and Shia. We just don’t need to make inane assumptions, such as in the case of Mr. Shah’s murder.
Things are not always as simple as they seem, and there could just be a parallel between the murder of Imam Akonjee and Mr. Shah…not saying that there is, but a good investigator doesn’t rule anything out.
Source: Allen West
