Last week 20-year-old Mahad Abdiaziz Abdirahaman submitted a statement to the Hennepin County Court in Minnesota saying that his stabbing attack at the Mall of America this past November was inspired by ISIS and was in response to the terror group’s calls to jihad.
But in the most recent case of “See No Jihad” syndrome, it seems that law enforcement and the local media don’t want to believe him,
And this is not the first time this has happened in Minnesota.
The stabbing incident occurred on Nov. 12 at Macy’s in the Mall of America in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington.
Two brothers, 19-year old Alexander Sanchez and 25-year old John Sanchez, received cuts to their face and upper body in the knife attack.
According to the local ABC affiliate, when Abdirahaman was pleading guilty in court last week his attorney read a statement from his client insisting that at the time of his arrest he told police that the attack was “an answer to the call of jihad.”
Abdirahaman said specifically that he was responding to the terror group’s “call for jihad by the Chief of Believer, Abu-Bakr al-Baghdadi, may Allah protect him, and by the Mujahideen of the Islamic State.”
He went further:
I want the reason for my attack to be clear to this court and to the public, so that you may understand that you will never be safe as long as your country is at war with Islam. And that the threat of death or imprisonment will never deter us from fighting for the sake of Allah.
Remarkably, despite Abdirahaman’s unmistakable confession, local authorities are still unsure whether to classify the attack as terrorism. The FBI said they were aware of the court statement but wouldn’t comment.
This is yet another episode of “See No Jihad” syndrome, where someone commits an act of violence and openly states that his motive is rooted in the ideology of radical Islam in response to calls for violence made by Islamic terror groups around the world — and authorities downplay the motive.
And this is not even the first instance of “See No Jihad” syndrome in Minnesota.
As I reported here at PJ Media several months ago, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune had trouble locating the motive for a nearly-identical terror attack to the one at the Mall of America last November.
In September 2016, Somali refugee Dahir Adan walked into the Crossroads Center shopping mall in St. Cloud, Minnesota, and went into a stabbing attack shouting “Islam, Islam” and “Allah Akbhar.” According to eyewitnesses, Adan asked some of his 10 stabbing victims if they were Muslim before attacking them. Adan was shot and killed by an off-duty police officer.
The day after the St. Cloud stabbing incident, ISIS officially claimed the attack, declaring that Adan was one of their “soldiers.”
While there has never been any evidence made public that Adan had any contact with ISIS or any other foreign terrorist organization, there was clear evidence he was driven by radical Islamic ideology.
That’s what then-FBI Director James Comey told the House Judiciary Committee during a hearing.
