When Journalists Become Terrorists

If you appreciate this essay by Fjordman, please consider making a donation to him, using the button at the bottom of this post.

When Journalists Become Terrorists

by Fjordman

It is unfortunately not unheard of for certain journalists to exhibit sympathies for militant organizations or terrorists. It is more unusual for journalists to become terrorists themselves. We now have such a case.

On June 6, 2017, a hammer-wielding Algerian student attacked police officers outside the famous Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, France. Farid Ikken, 40, took one of the officers to the ground and wounded him before other policemen shot two bullets at him. Ikken was carrying kitchen knives in addition to a hammer.

Anti-terrorist police who later raided Ikken’s flat found a video of him pledging his allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS). The French Interior Minister confirmed that Ikken shouted “This is for Syria!” as he struck the police officer.[1] According to the news agency AFP, a spokesperson for the French government said the man had never shown any signs of radicalization. The attack is therefore being treated as an “ isolated incident.”[2]

There seems to be many such “isolated incidents” happening during Ramadan, from Egypt to England.

The Swedish independent news website Fria Tider soon exposed that the suspected terrorist from Paris had previously worked as a journalist in Sweden, including for the national publicly funded radio broadcaster Radio Sweden (Sveriges Radio).[3] Radio Sweden eventually confirmed that he had worked for them in 2010.[4] Ikken was a freelance journalist employed for different media in Sweden for several years.

In 2009, Farid Ikken won an EU award for journalism against “discrimination.”[5] He is thus an award-winning journalist and a terrorist. The article for which he received this award dealt with asylum seekers who are not entitled to free medical care but who still receive it, courtesy of the local taxpayers. Ikken was pleased to see that such important topics as discrimination and diversity received positive attention from the EU.[6]

Ikken had studied at Stockholm University and is thought to have married a Swedish woman during his time there. In 2017, he was enrolled as a doctoral student specializing in communication at Metz University in eastern France. Arnaud Mercier, his PhD supervisor, stated that he was completely stupefied by the attack as Mr. Ikken “believed very much in journalistic ideals.” Professor Mercier claims that he didn’t have a beard and he didn’t wear special clothes. The Swedish Security Service (Säpo) had no previous record of Ikken.[7] A well-known French media and journalism researcher has described him as “meek as a lamb.”

According to most reports, Ikken does not seem to have shown external signs of so-called radicalization before this attack. The mass media and the authorities stress this fact, seemingly in an attempt to reassure people. Have they considered the possibility that this actually makes matters worse, not better?

The attack in front of the Notre Dame appears to be a case of what the author Daniel Pipes has dubbed “Sudden Jihad Syndrome.”[8] This term applies to Muslims who, without having previously shown clear signs of Jihadism, suddenly attack, anyway. If Farid Ikken was indeed a so-called “moderate Muslim,” his example illustrates that even so-called moderate Muslims may physically attack us.

The simple truth is that some allegedly moderate Muslims lie. The concepts of taqiyya and kitman allow Muslims to lie and falsify their intentions towards non-Muslims. This strategy is widely employed by Islamic terrorists.

Another possibility is that a moderate Muslim can suddenly turn militant within a very short time. This abrupt change may be triggered by political or personal experiences, even trivial ones.

As a science fiction fan, I have previously compared Islam to the film The Matrix from 1999. In the movie, anyone connected to the Matrix can at any time become agents of the system and kill those who are perceived as being a threat to the system. This is a good analogy for Islam. Anyone who identifies with Islam can suddenly become agents of Islam and kill those who are perceived as being a threat to the system.

In reality, this means that we cannot rely on so-called moderate Muslims. They may suddenly and without warning turn against us and attack us. The only ones we can trust to a certain extent are ex-Muslims, individuals who have completely abandoned and publicly distanced themselves from Islam.

Notes:

1.   www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4579792/Footage-shows-student-attacking-French-police-hammer.html
Revealed: Footage shows the moment ISIS-supporting Algerian student shouting ‘this is for Syria’ attacks French police with a hammer before being shot and wounded. 7 June 2017.
2.   sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&artikel=6712069 Man arrested over Paris attack lived in Sweden. June 7, 2017.
3.   www.friatider.se/svensk-terrorist-som-angrep-fransk-polis-med-hammare-jobbade-som-journalist-p-sr “Svensk” terrorist som angrep fransk polis med hammare var känd SR-journalist. June 7, 2017.
4.   sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=83&artikel=6711896 Mannen som sköts i Paris har levt i Sverige. June 7, 2017.
5.   www.expressen.se/nyheter/attackerade-polis-i-paris-har-studerat-till-journalist-i-sverige/ Farid Ikken misstänks för Paris-attacken. June 7, 2017.
6.   www.journalisten.se/nyheter/de-vann-journalistpris-mot-diskriminering De vann journalistpris mot diskriminering 29.10.2009
7.   www.thelocal.se/20170607/paris-hammer-attack-suspect-worked-as-a-journalist-in-sweden-report Paris hammer attack suspect worked as a journalist in Sweden: report. June 7, 2017.
8.   www.danielpipes.org/blog/2008/01/sudden-jihad-syndrome-its-now-official Sudden Jihad Syndrome — It’s Now Official. By Daniel Pipes, Jan 2, 2008.
 

DONATE TO FJORDMAN:

 

For a complete archive of Fjordman’s writings, see the multi-index listing in the Fjordman Files.

8 thoughts on “When Journalists Become Terrorists

  1. The Islamic concept of takfirism is what proves moderates do not matter.

    Moderates will NEVER declare extremists as apostates because moderates are unwilling to use force to back up that accusation.

    Moderates will ALWAYS go along to get along with extremists, thus sanctioning the idea that the extremists are the most faithful believers.

    • When do you people get this into your thick skulls.
      There is no extremist or moderate islam.
      There is only islam.

      • You seem to have missed my point.

        The point is that the most extreme believers are always the ones that will drive the course of events, and the so-called moderates will simply follow in their wake.

  2. @Fjordman,

    Regarding your mention of the movie “The Matrix”: My own thinking on the subject is that we can look at human beings using a hardware/software analogy. Our bodies are “hardware” and our thoughts and beliefs are “software.

    The problem we have is that people who call themselves Muslims have an operating system which has embedded within it the core beliefs of Islam. Human beings (hardware) with an Islamic operating system (software) may go on to develop or they may install ready-made “apps” which contain instructions that are relatively “peaceful” – or they may go on to develop or install “jihadi terrorist” apps which contain lines of code that instruct them to become violent and aggressive.

    The important point is that “jihadi terrorist” apps can only run on and Islamic operating system.

    It follows that being a Muslim is a necessary condition of becoming a “jihadi terrorist”.

    And as you say, it is difficult to know when someone with an Islamic operating system has self-installed a “jihadi terrorist” app until it’s too late – given the principles that are embedded within an Islamic operating system.

    http://thereligionofpeace.com/pages/quran/taqiyya.aspx

  3. Would you walk for a year with a gram of radium in your pocket? Definitely not: health damage would be observed with 1 milligram, and with 1 g you would quickly die in terrible suffering.
    The half-life of radium is 1600 years, that is half of the atoms of any piece of radium decay in 1600 years. This means that in less than 1 year, less than 1 ‰ will disintegrate, which will not prevent the obvious fact that you will be totally dead if you have 1g of radium in your pocket for one year (one or two weeks will be sufficient to ship you into a better world!)

    And yet, over 99.99% of the atoms of this gram of radium are “kind” atoms that will not disintegrate and will have caused you no harm. To accuse radium of being harmful, one could say that it is abusively stigmatizing the immense majority of the atoms of radium.
    So, you could tell me “just spot the radium atoms that will disintegrate, eliminate them from the gram of radium, and the trick is played, no more radioactivity of radium! “. Unfortunately, for deep physical reasons (Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle), it is totally and definitely impossible to predict what atom will disintegrate. Nothing, absolutely nothing, distinguishes, even a second before its disintegration, an atom of radium about to disintegrate from an atom of radium that will still be there in 1600 years!

    Well, for Islam, it’s the same. When asked about the entourage of Muslim terrorists, most of the time, this entourage seems to fall from the clouds: they are described as “nice”, “kind”, “workers”, “like everyone else” The followers of Islam are (as other human beings) as unpredictable as the atoms of radium: there is nothing to distinguish in advance those who will commit an attack of those who will live peacefully. It is even probable that if the Manchester murderer had been told five years ago that he would kill 22 people in the name of his religion five years later, he would have taken for a fool the man who would have made this prediction.

    But just as there are several varieties of ionizing radiation, (alpha, beta and gamma), there are several harmful effects of Islam on society. Unfortunately, they are not limited to terrorism, there are also honor crimes, “arranged” marriages, wacky food superstitions and clothing requirements, stoning, assaults on homosexuals, the death penalty for apostasy and, more generally, everything that constitutes sharia etc.

    This set of harmful effects of Islam means that beyond a very small percentage of Muslims in a society, there are serious social unrest (attacks, suburban riots, banned women in the streets, street prayers, demands on the content of education, etc.)

    Since this type of harmful effects is not encountered to this degree with any religion in the world other than Islam, it must be assumed that attacks and other social disorders are consubstantial to Islam in the same way that radioactivity is consubstantial with radium and other radioactive elements. Let us recall this basic fact that the “prophet” Mohammed, who in principle serves as an example to Muslims, would be considered under all present laws as a pedophile and a war criminal, and that if a new religion were invented, with a sacred text as violent and containing as many calls for murder as the Quran, there is every reason to believe that this new religion would very quickly be banned in any civilised country!

    • The other way to put this – and I have heard this one a few times now – is the “bowl of sweeties” analogy:

      If someone handed you across a bowl of sweets and said as you reached out to take one: Oh, btw, a minority of them have been poisoned. If you swallow one of them, you’re dead. Here, have a sweet anyway …. would you?

      Would you bring that bowl of sweets into your house and let your children partake …???

  4. I find it interesting to make the connection to the Matrix. Myself, I have long believed that the connection to a movie/tv show should be Star Trek. Islam (indeed globalism, one world order, liberalism, communism, ect..) is nothing short of, or other than, the Borg. Resistance is futile.
    Those who belong to the Borg, will not even notice you, unless you resist.
    If, or when you resist, they will ALL attack you. You are the enemy of the Borg, State, Antifa, Ialam, et al.
    It seems to me, (sarcasm here) that the simple solution to the crimes of this particular “borg” member is to send him back to Sweden where he was a happy, revered, and productive member of Western Society. I mean c’mon, he only “triggered” when he was surrounded by those racist, islamophobic, anti-accepting Frenchies. He has a family in Sweden, you can’t blame him for the French being so dastardly as to not accept him as one of their own.

Comments are closed.