03-Nov-17: Vehicle rammers and what we can learn from them

Tuesday’s weapon [Image Source]

What can the people living in the cross-hairs of ruthless murder-minded terrorists (that includes every single person reading this post) learn from the vehicle-ramming attack executed by an Islamist asylum-seeker in New York City this past Tuesday?

An article by Rukmini Maria Callimachi in yesterday’s New York Times [“What New York Attack Suspect’s Words May Say About ISIS Ties“] offers some answers. She’s a staff reporter at the Times, focusing on Islamic extremism.

Her analysis is based on detailed guidance published in the ISIS magazine, Rumiyah, a year ago. It provides a kind of Deadly Dummy’s Guide for aspiring terrorists preparing to use a vehicle to wreak havoc on innocent people – referred as to “enemies of Allah” in the subtle language of this widely-distributed and easily-accessible journal:

1. Keep driving the car or truck for as long as possible. “To ensure the most carnage“, it advises, don’t exit the vehicle during the attack. Stay inside, “driving over the already harvested kuffar“. (That  word means infidels, unbelievers and refers to almost everyone on earth.) “Continue crushing their remains until it becomes physically impossible to continue by vehicle.”
2. When the vehicle has been used to the full, move on to other weapons. Guns and knives are top of the list.
3. Ensure the public understands that the killing comes from the perpetrator’s allegiance to ISIS. The article tells the murder-minded attacker to write a note on paper, including the message that “The Islamic State will remain”. It’s a slogan with roots in the Islamic doctrine of “baqiya“. Then to throw the paper sheets out of the vehicle so they can be found and read when the murders have been done.
4. Record an oath of allegiance – either audio or video – addressed to an individual along the lines of how “early Muslims pledged fealty to the Prophet Muhammad, and later to the caliphs that succeeded him”. Murderers inspired by ISIS are told to pledge to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi al-Husseini al-Qurayshi. He’s the figure described by the NYTimes [“U.S. Actions in Iraq Fueled Rise of a Rebel“, August 10, 2014] as “a street thug” when American forces first apprehended him in 2004 and who has gone on to become “the self-appointed caliph of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and the architect of its violent campaign to redraw the map of the Middle East.“

From the ISIS website: A user’s manual for mass-murderers [Image Source]

There’s no book of guidelines for victims. We’re all left to rely on common sense. The problem in the case of lethal rammings – as we have learned to our sorrow in Israel where we don’t lack terrorists – is their vehicles rarely come with signs on them saying “I look innocent enough but I am planning to murder you and anyone else I can.“

Trying to figure out what life-affirming, cultured and non-racist societies ought to do to safeguard innocent people from the lunacy of the rammers (and shooters and stabbers) is never going to be easy or elegant, and will require a much deeper understanding of what brings Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipovs into our midst than almost every society on earth is willing to try to achieve.