Friday, December 04, 2015

Twenty-five years growing up in Saudi Arabia shapes a person's character.

Prayer beads are shown inside the home of suspects Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik in Redlands, California December 4, 2015, following Wednesday's attacks. The FBI is investigating this week's massacre of 14 people by the married couple in as an act of terrorism, officials said on Friday, noting that the female shooter had pledged allegiance to the leader of a militant group Islamic State.

December 4, 2015
Mehreen Zahra-Malik

Tashfeen Malik's path to accused mass killer (click here) in California began in a small city on the Indus River in Pakistan's Punjab province.
It was from here, when she was a toddler, that she moved with her father Gulzar 25 years ago to Saudi Arabia, where he became more deeply religious, more conservative and more hardline, according to a family member.
A picture slowly emerged on Friday of the role and possible motivations of 27-year-old Malik in this week's killing of 14 people in California, including her apparent pledge of allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State militant group, according to U.S. officials.
Malik, with her husband Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, is accused of storming a holiday party on Wednesday in San Bernardino, California, and opening fire in America's worst mass shooting in three years....'

The lawyers for the family are not talking to the American public. They are talking to some folks, but, it isn't Americans.

The MOTHER. Evidently, the mother/grandmother was living in the house with Mr. and Mrs. Farook. Walk a mile. What was she suppose to do? If she was living with her son, she wasn't self-supporting. She has a grandchild. What is that woman suppose to do?

I think she should have done things differently, but, it isn't easy for some people to make that decision.

Additionally, I think the couple believed they were going to live through the attack and return home. Basically, they did.

I would not be surprised that Farook believed he was going to attend work the next day and simply go through life as if nothing happened. I think Tashfeen believed she would be home to put her baby for a nap.

Tashfeen was raised with Wahhabism.

Additionally, the latest reporting I read about Baghdadi is that he is hiding. He is believed to have left his residence and taken up a life of hiding from jets and guns pointed at him. So, if she was posting something to her ideology, he would not have known it. 

I think what we are seeing in California is the same as what transpired in Canada, too. Self-radicalized citizens. Farook was a citizen of the USA. Tashfeen was a member of an extremely conservative family in Saudi Arabia. Then she comes here. How many women 'on the block' wore veils and burkas? How about none? "OMG, it is true the demon serpent lives in the USA." 

Would she help her husband take revenge on people she was convinced were the Devil, especially when she believed they were going to get away with it? A lot of magical thinking can occur if one is devotely faithful with god on their side. 

These kind of PERSONAL attacks for revenge happens everyday in countries where people live in poverty where Muslims live. The victims to the violence were known to the Farooks. This is more a work place violence straight out of the third world culture of middle east. This wasn't a cell waiting for orders from Baghdadi. 

Baghdad, Iraq has a terrible problem with violence just like this. "You hit me, I hit you." That is exactly what happened in San Bernardino. The Farooks believed they were going to cause maximal damage and then return home, unload the van, put the baby's car seat back in the rear seat, have dinner that Mama prepared for a busy couple that went to the doctor's appointment, put baby into the crib for the night and then go to bed together. That is what happened here. There is no global influence. This is the reality of Muslims and Christians in the impoverished middle east.