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10 Things We Should Learn

From the Ohio State Attack
The attack was one of the least-covered jihadist attack on
American soil. The media dropped the issue like a hot potato.
BY Shireen Qudosi @ShireenQudosi | December 2, 2016

Americans returned from Thanksgiving to news of the latest jihadi

attack waged by a Somali Muslim, Abdul Razak Ali Artan. Declaring
that he had reached a boiling point, the 18-year-old Ohio State
University student drove a car into a crowded area on the Columbus
campus. He then exited the vehicle and attacked the crowd with a
knife. Artan injured 11 students before being killed by a university
police officer.

Shireen Qudosi
Shireen Qudosi is a Muslim writer based in California.
@SHIREENQUDOSI

Artan was a legal resident who came to the US through Pakistan in

2014. He arrived with his family, securing a refugee status after
having escaped from Somalia.
Ohio State University President Michael V. Drake, along with Ohio
State Governor John Kasich, shied away from identifying the cause
of the attack. This despite Artans last Facebook post embracing
a chilling message that in part read, By Allah, we will not let you
sleep unless you give peace to the Muslims
Terrorism expert Walid Phares is clear about the motive. In private
correspondence, Dr. Phares shares his belief that the Ohio State

attack is Another case of urban Jihadism. At this point the issue isnt
even a link or not to ISIS or al Qaeda, but a link to the specific
ideology called Jihadism. This is the generator of terror.
In his book, The War of Ideas: Jihadism Against Democracy, Dr.
Phares charts irreconcilable views between democracy and the
violent ideology of jihadism that promotes a doctrine of death.
Writing in The War of Ideas, Dr. Phares shares the insight that seems
to escape academia and a former GOP presidential candidate:
The ushq al mout (love of death) is the backbone of suicide bombing
and gives terrorism its most frightening firepower. Indeed, once the
fear of death is subtracted from political planning and public
concern, there are no limits to the power of Jihadism.
In the case of Ohio State jihadi Abdul Artan, the question is how did
a child once fleeing Somalia under the fear of death then embrace
death when finally under the protection of the greatest superpower?
Further, how did decades of experience as a refugee escaping
persecution not deter Artan from the jihadi doctrine of death?
Answering these questions requires understanding how violent
ideology slips through the slightest cracks in the system.
America is dealing with a crushing rise of jihadi dark web chatter
that privatizes radicalization. Indoctrination into a violent political
ideology thrives through combination of secret portals and chat
rooms like AMAQ on Telegram that provide safe online communities
for jihadi talk. Instant radicalization paired with travel to or from redflag nations, broken immigration vetting and tracking systems, lack
of community emphasis on assimilation, and the politicization of
mosques as polarizing hotspots, places individuals on a three month
fast track to radicalization.
Just three months prior, Artan was featured in Humans of Ohio
State a profile in the universitys student paper that showed
Artan hyper-focused on prayer spaces and identity politics. Three
months later, hes pledged allegiance to ISIS in a killing spree. We
could conclude that time period of radicalization was just this brief
or we could, far more reasonably, conclude that Artans use of the
lefts victimhood narratives dovetail quite comfortably with his jihadi
beliefs.
That is the hard reality were faced with. Instead, talking points have
shifted to Islamophobia as a public health crisis for Muslims. And

rather than recognizing the victims, mainstream media is

humanizing the attacker as a social outcast who loved America.
That real problem is the killing sprees some Muslims are engaging
in; it is not the mean words penciled and shoved into the mail slot at
the local mosque. The inability of Muslims to recognize a present
danger versus fear of a hypothetical threat, only further places all
Americans at risk because it prevents us from being able to
collectively move forward in dealing with radical Islam.

It also places Muslim Americans at greater risk; the more Muslims

deny the causal link between Islam and jihad, deflecting attention to
a self-victimizing rhetoric, the more rest of America grows frustrated.
It is also worth asking whether Muslim American organizations and
communities that obstruct discourse and discovery by misdirecting
away from real problems should be included in a broader perimeter
of public inquiry. Instead of dealing with the most recent eruption of
radical Islam, the issue is swept under the rug and upon it sits the
incubus we call Islamophobia.
Muslim Brotherhood affiliated Islamist groups like CAIR, who could
not step away from the abacus of Muslim grievances for just one
day, continued tallying letters (real or scripted) rather than looking
beyond themselves to see that Muslim American communities have
a much bigger problem: radicalization.
In fact, across American there were only a handful of outlets and
personalities that are pressing for truth in dialogue. This includes
Conservative Reviews Carly Hoilman, who took to higher ground in
a piece titled Difficult Conversations: Challenging Islam in the Wake
of the Ohio State Attack.
It also includes Michelle Malkin who tweeted, Ohio State University
jihad has virtually disappeared from national headlines except for
the p.c. Muslims fear backlash stories. That pattern was also
spotted by the The Foreign Desk, which noted dark web chatter was
on the rise with talk hailing the attack and allegiance being shown in
the form of profile pics replaced with a photo of Artan.
Being able to move forward means treating thought process behind
this attack as a forensic scene that requires precision and analysis.

That scene tells that that the only public health crisis an ideological
virus with a three month incubation period. This means that the next
attacker is set to be radicalized by Inauguration Day.
Studying that virus for actionable intelligence means observing how
that strain has formed and how it influences another host. Yet, the
Ohio State attack was one of the least exhaustively covered jihadist
attack on American soil; due to the uncomfortable questions it
raises, the media dropped the issue like a hot potato.
The implications of the attack encompassed key crisis points facing
our nation and new administration, including immigration, travel to
red-flagged state sponsors of terror, and questions of assimilation.
Not only were these though questions glossed over, but the
intelligence we could gain from them were missed opportunities,
including:

1. Failing to look at the radicalization of the Somali

Muslim community and its troubled history in the United
States as one of the leading actors of domestic terror.
2. Waiting for ISIS to confirm the attack rather than
moving proactively on the facts that jihad comes from the
doctrine of war in Islam. That doctrine is not limited to
ISIS. It will continue to be a problem long after ISIS is
defeated if its defeated.
3. Failing to spot that ISIS does not claim every attack;
they prefer to take credit posthumously. ISIS didnt claim
three radicalized women in France who failed carry out
attacks against Notre Dame, but it did claim radicalized
women in Kenya. ISIS also didnt claim New Jersey
attacker Ahmad Khan Rahami, though the pattern of
attack mirrors ISIS.
4. Failing to see that Ohio State attacker Adul Artan selfidentified with ISIS in Facebook statement that called for
the message being screen-grabbed before it was deleted.
This is standard direction under ISIS to individual actors
so that ISIS may identify the attack as a pledge. Those

directions appear on page 12 of the latest issue

of Rumiyah, an ISIS propaganda magazine.
5. Failing to identify the relevance of Artans pledge to
ISIS versus Al-Shabab, a Somalia-linked terror group that,
itself, in 2012 pledged allegiance to Al-Qaeda. If the most
popular Somali terror group is Al-Shabab, and the most
popular Pakistani terror group is Al-Qaeda, what does it
say that Artan would self-identify with ISIS? This is
particularly noteworthy considering Artans family fled
Somalia for Pakistan in 2007 before arriving to the United
States in 2014. The desired affiliation with the most
popular and coveted terror group on the planet right now
rather than the group associated with national identity
tells us that ISIS has come a long way from being a JV
team and has secured global appeal.
6. Failing to understand that when ISIS claims Artan as a
soldier, theyre telling us that the face of war has shifted.
Artans last online statement confirms that theirs is
ideological war, born in an ideology, bursting kinetically
through physical attacks. Their soldiers dont wear
uniforms and their war zone is the public space. Their
targets are civilians.
7. The media and politicians premature resurrection
of gun control debate in a desperate attempt to politicize
the attack along the lines of their preferred policy
solutions. Of course, it became that a knife and vehicle
were also used as weapons in the attack.
8. Ignoring the correlation between attacks in Europe and
Canada with the Ohio State attack, all of which follow the
2014 instructions of then ISIS chief spokesman Abu
Muhammad al-Adnani who called for mobilized attacks
using any tool available, including weaponizing vehicles.

9. Ignoring those instructions to weaponized vehicles

were again detailed as a call to action this past
Thanksgiving, also shared in the most recent issue
of Rumiyah.
10. Trusting the public face of the Muslim community
rather than engaging in investigative journalism to
discover the true nature of comments shared by Artans
brother and his network of family and friends. His
brothers Facebook page shows almost zero awareness of
the gravity of the attack, no denouncement of Artans
actions as being against an Islam Muslims publically claim
jihad has nothing to do with, and no sympathy for victims
of the Ohio State attack.