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Chattanooga shooter changed after Mideast visit, friend says

Chattanooga, Tennessee (CNN)The man who killed four Marines in Chattanooga, Tennessee, changed after spending time in the Middle East and "distanced himself" for the first few months after returning, a friend says.

"Something happened over there," Abdulrazzak Brizada said of Muhammad Youssuf Abdulazeez, adding that "he never became close to me like he was before he went overseas. ... I'm sure he had something that happened to him overseas."

Jordanian sources said Abdulazeez had been in Jordan as recently as 2014 visiting an uncle. He visited Kuwait and Jordan in 2010, Kuwait's Interior Ministry said.

Abdulazeez allegedly had a blog that appeared to illustrate his hard-line religious beliefs, the Daily Beast reported. The blog had only two posts, both published July 13.

Abdulazeez also took several trips to Jordan, a Muslim-majority country considered one of the more stable Middle Eastern nations, Reuters reported. U.S. authorities are still trying to determine if Abdulazeez came into contact with any radical terrorist groups or extremists during his travels.

Jordan is one of the main crossings for foreign fighters wanting to enter Syria. It is also a host country for hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees. According to the Post's report, about 2 million people travel from Jordan to the U.S. every year.

According to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors online postings by radical Islamist organizations, Abdul­azeez was the author of “MYABDULAZEEZ,” which was first posted on July 13 and included two entries.

In the first, “A Prison Called Dunya,” Abdul­azeez described everyday life as a prison and the Koran as a means of transcending it. In Arabic, “Dunya” refers to earthly concerns as opposed to spiritual ones.

“This life we are living is nothing more than a test of our faith and patience,” he wrote. “It was designed to separate the inhabitants of Paradise from the inhabitants of Hellfire ... Don’t let the society we live in deviate you from the task at hand.”

He added, “Brothers and sisters don’t be fooled by your desires, this life is short and bitter and the opportunity to submit to allah may pass you by.”

In his second posting, Abdul­azeez discussed the Sahaba — companions of the prophet Muhammad — and how they served their faith by bringing it to the world, sometimes through warfare.

“Every one of them fought Jihad for the sake of Allah,” he wrote. “Every one of them had to make sacrifices in their lives. . . . After the prophets, they were the best human beings that ever lived.”

Americans are killing each other again. That is the fundamental—if politically less useful—lesson of what happened in Tennessee yesterday. An American citizen got his gun and he went to a strip mall and he killed four of his fellow citizens, killed them as dead as Michael Brown or Eric Garner, as dead as the people who were killed by Dylann Roof, who's awaiting trial, or as dead as the people who were killed by James Holmes, who was convicted of killing them just yesterday. By all the criteria of which we boast of our exceptionalism to the world, Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez was as much of an American as the four people he allegedly murdered. His motivation doesn't matter. He was a citizen. His victims were citizens. Americans killing other Americans. It's an old story being rehearsed again with unfortunate frequency.

"I say violence is necessary. Violence is a part of America's culture.
It is as American as cherry pie."

H. Rap Brown said that in 1967, and everybody pretended to be shocked. The descendants of the people who burned down the Ursuline Convent in Boston pretended to be shocked. The descendants of the lynchers in the South pretended to be shocked. The descendants of the soldiers who slaughtered the native Americans on the Plains pretended to be shocked. The descendants of the men who filled the ranks of the Westies, or La Cosa Nostra, or Nathan Bedford Forrest's cavalry pretended to be shocked. We all pretended to be shocked, just as we all are pretending to be shocked today, just as we all pretended to be shocked after Charleston, and Newtown, and Oklahoma City, and Jonesboro, and Aurora. In his new book, Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the violence inherent in a nation built on the blood of slaves and on a foundation of violent white supremacy. This is how violence is as American as cherry pie. It is baked into the culture of this nation and everybody pretends not to notice until it festers and boils up again.

In that sense, and in that context, Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez was every bit an American. He had a grudge. The basis of that grudge, whether it was rooted in a bloody-minded version of religion or an anger at the country's policies across the seas, is beside the point. Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez was angry at someone or something. He had a problem he could not solve and, being an American, he reached for that most American of solutions. He reached for a gun.

This is not an explanation that carries any political utility. Already, there is the high screeching from the xenophobic Right. Already, there is the inchoate mongering of fear and war. Already, we got a con run on us about how this act was inspired by ISIS, and enough with that already. We are claiming that a bunch of barbarians driving pick-up trucks around the desert have the ability to perform elaborate intercontinental social-media Jedi mind-tricks. In this case, to do so without any concrete evidence, is to ignore the very obvious domestic nature of the crime in question.

According to estimates, so far in 2015, on almost 27,000 occasions, an American chose that same course of action. They all had problems they had decided they could not solve. They all had grudges. They all had something that made them angry enough. And, as a result, almost 7,000 of our fellow citizens are as dead as the people in Tennessee. This is not an explanation that satisfies any particular agenda but, unquestionably, we are a very fearful nation with an unacknowledged history of violence that also has armed itself very heavily. Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, an American citizen, chose a very American course of action. He had a problem he couldn't solve so he reached for the most American of solutions. He reached for a gun and he killed some of his fellow citizens.​

Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the violence inherent in a nation built on the blood of slaves and on a foundation of violent white supremacy.

the violence inherent in a nation built on the blood of slaves and on a foundation of violent white supremacy.

Charles P. Pierce is a staff writer for Grantland and the author of Idiot America.

Lord Jim wrote:So the author manages to find a way to blame a person murdering as an Islamic Jihadist in 2015 on slavery and "white supremacy"....

This is how violence is as American as cherry pie. It is baked into the culture of this nation and everybody pretends not to notice until it festers and boils up again. [...]

This is not an explanation that satisfies any particular agenda but, unquestionably, we are a very fearful nation with an unacknowledged history of violence that also has armed itself very heavily. Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, an American citizen, chose a very American course of action. He had a problem he couldn't solve so he reached for the most American of solutions. He reached for a gun and he killed some of his fellow citizens.​

MajGenl.Meade wrote:

Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the violence inherent in a nation built on the blood of slaves and on a foundation of violent white supremacy.

Damnation! It's whitey again!

He reached for a gun

or why you think that nobody is trying to find out what this killer's motive was.

His motivation doesn't matter.

What happened in a Charleston church on Wednesday night is a lot of things, but one thing it's not is "unspeakable." We should speak of it often. We should speak of it loudly. We should speak of it as terrorism, which is what it was. We should speak of it as racial violence, which is what it was.

We should speak of it as an attack on history, which it was...

We should speak of it as an assault on the idea of a political commonwealth, which is what it was. ...[Which of course applies perfectly to Jihadist terrorism]

Think about what happened. Think about why it happened. Talk about what happened. Talk about why it happened. Do these things, over and over again.

MajGenl.Meade wrote:

MajGenl.Meade wrote:

Ta-Nehisi Coates explores the violence inherent in a nation built on the blood of slaves and on a foundation of violent white supremacy.

Damnation! It's whitey again!

Econoline wrote:

I'm not sure why you think that Dylann Roof's motives are seen as any *MORE* important than the motives of James Holmes, Jared Loughner, Nidal Hasan, Adam Lanza, Seung-hui Cho, or any of these guys or these guys...or why you think that nobody is trying to find out what this killer's motive was.

But the facts remain (1)that (unlike Mohammad Abdulazeez*) Dylan Roof, prior to his actions, made his motives and the prejudices behind those motives abundantly clear; (2) that those prejudices are shared by a substantial number of his fellow U.S. citizens; and (3) those motives and prejudices just might be something which the rest of us can try to eliminate or at least diminish.




* I stand ready to change this part of my post if and when they find any sort of clear manifesto left by Abdulazeez describing his motives.