Here is the headline of the justly respected Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) dated September 29th. “Terrorverdächtiger festgenommen. Amerikaner wollte Pentagon mit Modellflugzeugen angreifen“. (Terror suspect arrested "An American wanted to attack the Pentagon with model airplanes".) 

The text lets one discover that the “American” impostor intending to conduct his Jihad against the Pentagon is a Rezwan X. In itself, the term that is used here is a supportive and obedient bow before the altar of PC. As always in such cases, the phrasing serves to blunt the message and to protect the unworthy. It is hardly likely that the official US citizenship of Rezwan had much to do with his self-perceived identity and whatever possible loyalties that might have arisen out of the implied commitment to America. 

Generously, Rezwan explained his motives. According to what he asserts, in earlier times God sent plagues, earthquakes, floods and you name it, to punish and castigate sinful civilizations by destroying them. Modestly, Rezwan implies that he feels that lately God has become a bit lax. That being so, Our Lord neglects to punish to a sufficient extent the sinners that might be incensing him. Centuries before Mohammed got into the act, Attila the Hun anointed himself to be the “Scourge of God”. In the light of that, Rezwan’s contemporary efforts follow the tradition of a proud heritage.

As we find out, Allah’s present enemies were Rezwan X’s intended target. That enemies list is a copious category. It includes everything that evolved in the past fourteen hundred years in those localities where the future was being forged. At least in the case that we are talking about, the errors and degenerations to be rooted out make a long list. No wonder, as it includes everything that had not yet been known locally when Mohammed took over his neighborhood. 

Call that good news. For one thing, the many items that grace the inventory of sins promise that the Prophet’s contemporary champions are unlikely to run out of work very soon. The poisonous trees they are dedicated to fell amount to a genuine forest. We know that inactivity leads to bad thoughts and those to sin. Therefore, the energy to be exerted to complete the task of cleansing the world will reduce temptations and thus keep the road of Jihadists to heaven open. That way the champions of virtue will remain occupied and their attention will be divided. This means borrowed time for unbelievers. Anyone not blown up immediately due to that delay caused by too much to do will know how to appreciate the unintended leniency.

The seemingly misleading reference to formal citizenship seems to have a function. It is to push out of the picture other factors that might identify the apprentice assassin. Further inconvenient motivations that might shed light on Rezwan’s motivation can be suspected to have also played a role when discretion was applied. 

The bit about the earlier role of natural disasters is one of the areas that might warrant attention. If you watch the news, you are likely to have the impression that we are being inundated by reports about famines, floods, quakes storms and epidemics that decimate the areas upon which these cataclysms visit. If these are insufficient then apparently mankind’s sins must be rising to match unemployment. 

Logic makes one raise the possibility that the shrinking intention to punish attributed to God is failing Allah’s cause. This could become the basis of the Muslim equivalent of the West’s “God is Dead” theory.

On the other hand, it is also conceivable that, it is God’s will not to punish the world more than he does. In this case, the existing amount of chastisement would conform to God’s will. If so, then God’s anger is less intensively glowing than is Razwan’s. If that is so then, adding the bombings, kidnappings, beheadings and WMDs by the radical defenders of Islam to the traditional scourges of mankind, appears in a new light. Acting as they do as proxies of God might not only be unnecessary but also against God’s will. Could it be that, the presumptuous claim of acting in God’s name is an unsubstantiated and blasphemous excuse for terrorism? 

With that, terrorism is reduced to be the warfare of fallible but angry men against their fellows. The real blasphemy in that is that we have to do here with an arguably criminal action. That reduces the terrorist even if claim to be serving God to be a delinquent by instinct or by criminal conviction. Thereby the political, social and family context that nurtures such behavior emerges as sinful. This condition makes it to deserve the divine lashing that, by Razwan’s concept, expresses God’s wrath. That would make the next drone that smashes an affiliate of Razwan’s gang brothers to smithereens into the raised warning finger of an angry Deity.