RUTHFULLY YOURS

It was a weekend of coincidences: acts declared not to be terrorism that just happened to look a great deal like…terrorism.

After a bomb went off at 23^rd Street and 6^th Avenue in Manhattan and another bomb was found four blocks away, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said: In a press conference in the aftermath, New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio said, “This was an intentional act.” However, he added that he didn’t think it was terrorism, and refused to agree with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who said that the bombing was “obviously an act of terrorism.”

De Blasio’s position was entirely incoherent: what is an intentional bombing if it isn’t terrorism? Cuomo made a bit more sense as he explained that while it was obviously terrorism, “it’s not linked to international terrorism. In other words, we’ve found no ISIS connection.”

Very well. So he was leaving the door open to it being “right-wing extremists.” But was it an act of jihad? Both de Blasio and Cuomo were committed to denying that there is any jihad that has anything to do with terrorism in the first place, so they would never answer (or, given the state of the mainstream media, be asked) that question, but just to assert that the bombing was not terrorism, or international terrorism, did not entirely rule out that it may have been an act of Islamic jihadis. Yet De Blasio remained mystified: “We know it was a very serious incident, but we have a lot more work to do to be able to say what kind of motivation was behind this. Was it a political motivation? Was it a personal motivation? We do not know that yet.”

A Tumblr page entitled “I’m the NY Bomber” professed to offer a clue. It said: “You probably have all seen the news by now, the explosives detonated in New York City, that was me. I did it because I cannot stand society. I cannot live in a world where homosexuals like myself as well as the rest of the LGBTQ+ community are looked down upon by society.”

This was immediately dubious in light of the fact that gay activists are not generally known for attempting acts of terrorist mass murder. What’s more, we have seen this kind of disinformation in the recent past, when the news traveled worldwide that Orlando jihad mass murderer Omar Mateen was gay, and killed not for Allah but out of a desire for revenge against gays who had infected him with AIDS. Only later, and with much less publicity, was it revealed that there was no evidence that Mateen actually had any gay lovers. No one seemed interested in where this disinformation originated – least of all the mainstream media that had purveyed it so energetically.

And now – what a coincidence! – this Tumblr page appeared just as it was revealed that a note in Arabic was left with one of the New York bombs, and witnesses said that a man who appeared to be an Arab and carrying a suitcase was seen just before the explosion.

The coincidences multiplied. The second bomb was fashioned from a pressure cooker, the same kind of bombs used in the Boston Marathon jihad massacre in 2013, and for which assembly directions have been published in an al-Qaeda magazine. But there is no indication that this was terrorism, says de Blasio! It’s all just coincidence!

Meanwhile, a pipe bomb went off at the Seaside Semper Five Marine Corps Charity 5K in New Jersey on the same day. It had been timed to go off just as thousands of runners were passing by, so as to maximize the carnage, but the race had been delayed. Investigators concluded that the New York and New Jersey bombs came from the same person. The resemblance of the New Jersey plot to the Boston Marathon jihad bombing was just more…coincidence.

In Minnesota came more coincidences. A Muslim named Dahir A. Adan, making “references to Allah,” according to news reports, and asking at least one of his potential victims if he was a Muslim, stabbed eight people at the Crossroads Center mall in St. Cloud, Minnesota. An FBI official said that the bureau was investigating this as a “possible act of terrorism.”

“Possible”? Apparently the FBI was leaving open the possibility that Adan’s “references to Allah” and asking if someone was Muslim was just a coincidence. We have seen that before: in Mali, Muslims screaming “Allahu akbar” took hostages, freeing those who could recite the Qur’an. In September 2013 at Nairobi’s Westgate Mall, Muslims murdered people who couldn’t answer questions about Islam. In June 2014, Muslims murdered people who could not pass an Islam quiz. In November 2014, Muslims murdered 28 non-Muslims who couldn’t recite Qur’an verses. In April 2015, Muslims screaming “Allahu akbar” stormed Garissa University College, and only shot those who couldn’t recite Qur’an. In a Bangladesh restaurant in July 2016, the jihadis spared those who could recite from the Qur’an. What a coincidence!

Coincidentally also, the Islamic State claimed responsibility for both the New York and Minnesota attacks. And no doubt it was still another coincidence that on the same Saturday, someone attacked a police officer with a machete in a mall in Calgary, Alberta.

The coincidences are coming thick and fast, and the Islamic State is claiming victories, while authorities scratch their heads and wonder whether or not this is or that attack is terrorism.

The evidence that it is, and jihad terrorism at that, is piling up in New York, and is abundantly clear in Minnesota already. The denial and willful ignorance of American officials in the face of this ongoing war is getting people seriously injured and killed. It is time to stop counting coincidences and to start calling what is happening by its right name.