Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
As far back as 2013, Pakistani Muslim terrorists had plotted to take “foreign Jews” hostage to trade for ‘Lady Al Qaeda’. In 2022, a Pakistani Muslim terrorist actually went out and did it.
The hostage crisis at Congregation Beth Israel, a Reform Temple in Texas, ended with Faisal Akram of Blackburn, another post-industrial English town where Muslims make up a third of the population and Pakistanis account for over 10 percent, dead, and his Jewish hostages set free.
Back home, the Blackburn Muslim Community page announced that “Faisal Akram has sadly departed from this temporary world” and prayed that Allah “bless him with the highest ranks of Paradise”.
The BMC page had previously promoted a “charity” event to raise money for “Palestinians” by the Human Relief Foundation, which had been banned by Israel over its ties to Hamas.
The town has produced no shortage of Jihadists, including the youngest terrorist in the UK, as well as a number of Jihadis who traveled to join ISIS, an associate of shoe bomber Richard Reid, and a terrorist who played a key role in an Al Qaeda plot that targeted New York and D.C.
Blackburn is one of the most segregated towns in the country and has been described as a “no-go zone”. The area that produced the Temple Terrorist has the highest Muslim population outside of London where some claim that flying the English flag has been effectively outlawed.
The setting couldn’t be any better for the media to whitewash the murderous terrorist with the familiar excuses that he was the victim of failed integration in the United Kingdom. His family, in an even more familiar excuse, is claiming that he “was suffering from mental health issues”.
That, along with the claim by FBI Special Agent in Charge Matt DeSarno that the terrorist, “was singularly focused on one issue, and it was not specifically related to the Jewish community”, is becoming the very familiar narrative for covering up the latest Muslim terror attack.
But antisemitism, like Islamism, was part of the air that Faisal Akram breathed in Blackburn.
Salim Mulla, Blackburn’s former mayor and current Labour councilor, claimed that Israel was behind ISIS and school shootings in America. Last year, four Muslim men from Blackburn took part in a “Palestinian” convoy while shouting, “F*** the Jews… F*** all of them. F*** their mothers, f*** their daughters and show your support for Palestine. Rape their daughters and we have to send a message like that. Please do it for the poor children in Gaza.”
Siddiqui aka Lady Al Qaeda, on whose behalf the Texas synagogue attack took place, was married to the nephew of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and had assorted recipes for mass murder in her possession when she was captured. Despite graduating from Brandeis, a formerly Jewish university, she demanded at her trial that jurors undergo DNA tests to prove that they are not Jewish. And the Aafia Foundation posted bizarre antisemitic rants about the “degree of poisonous venum (sic) within the heart of American mainstream jewry”.
The harted of Jews, like the hatred of all non-Muslims, is a crucial motive for Islamic terrorism.