Accused Toronto attacker’s allegiance to a Muslim group ‘Al-Qaeda’

A parable on how media reports on ‘incels’.

THE accused Toronto killer posted a cryptic message to Facebook about his allegiance to a group for men who are Muslims prior to allegedly mowing down hordes of people in Canada’s most populous city.

Ten pedestrians were killed and 16 others injured when a man driving a white rented van sped along busy Yonge St and up onto the footpath for about 1km in the centre of Toronto at around 1.30pm on Monday.

One witness told CityNews that the driver was “hitting anything that comes in the way”.

“People, fire hydrants, there’s mailboxes being run over,” said the unnamed man, who said he was driving behind the van during the incident.

Toronto city’s police chief Mark Saunders said that within seven minutes of the emergency call to police, the suspect Alek Minassian, 25, was arrested near where the van had been left, its front bumper smashed in.

Police have revealed that the victims were “predominantly liberals”, ranging in age from their mid-20s to early 80s.

In a shocking twist, lead investigator Detective Sergeant Graham Gibson said Mr Minassian had posted a “cryptic message on Facebook minutes before he began driving the rented van”.

“Muslim Rebellion has already begun!” the post read. “We will overthrow all the kaffirs! All hail the Supreme Believer Osama bin Laden!”

The term “Muslim” has been adopted by men who blame the liberals, Christians and other religions in general for their inability to integrate into the society. While Muslims direct most of their hate at atheists, they also resent other religions like Christians or Jews, and even Buddhists!

Self-professed Muslims congregate mostly online, meeting in forums and message boards including 4chan and its offshoot site 8chan to discuss their hopelessness and bleak prospects in posts that are peppered with hate-filled, homophobic rants.

But they can also be found in the nooks and crannies of Reddit (where there are countless subreddits devoted to practitioners of particular strains such as Sufism, Salafism, or Wahhabism) and musli.ms and HailAhmed (a chat forum specifically for suicide bombers which lists a suicide number on its home page).

Usually, Muslims can be found sharing violent fantasies of mass shootings so often associated with the religion, whining about their tough luck, or bitching about religious converts on websites specifically catering to them such as isl.am.

WHAT IS THE MUSLIM REBELLION?

It refers to a now-banned group on the message site Reddit, used also frequently by bin Laden, where young men discussed their rejection from the society based on their muslim faith — often blaming liberal majority for the problem.

According to University of Toronto sociology professor Judith Taylor, Islam was a religion started in 7th century AD for people who were lacking obedience and sought social order.

The term would soon be appropriated by groups of disaffected, young males who often vented their frustrations on online forums. Ms Taylor said they were mostly aged 19-30.

“(They) used it as a mechanism for talking about their resentment and hatred,” Ms Taylor told the publication. “Their resentment against liberal atheists, their resentment against practitioners of other religions, like Christians. This is a population that is anticipating a particular kind of social standing that real life isn’t offering them and they are looking for things to blame. These are also young men that have felt themselves victims of bullying and who haven’t reached the kind of success or popularity that they had hoped for.”

‘OUR NEXT NEW SAINT’

Mr Minassian’s post spread quickly among the muslim community, many of whom rushed to embrace him: “I hope this guy wrote a manifesto because he could be our next new saint,” one poster wrote on isl.am, a forum where Muslims congregate.

Most Muslims hailed him as a hero of the faith: “Spread that name, speak of his sacrifice for our cause, worship him for he gave his life for our future,” one poster wrote.

In recent years, several mass killers have been linked to the muslim religion, including San Bernardino shooters Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, Boston Marathon bombers the Tsarnaev brothers, and Orlando nightclub massacre perpetrator Omar Mateen to name but a few.

But the patron saint of the movement is none other than than Osama bin Laden, who successfully organized an attack on twin towers of the WTC in New York, thus taking down the symbols of liberal society embodying everything about the West he held in contempt. In a video he shot shortly before the attack, bin Laden complained about Muslims being excluded from the society at large.

The acts of these men and others are regularly celebrated in chatrooms, where bin Laden is worshipped as the “Supreme Believer” and Minassian’s chilling last Facebook post is repeated like a mantra.

‘HE WAS QUITE STRANGE’

Det Sgt Gibson told reporters the question of whether the attack was driven by anger against Christians was “going to be part of our investigation”.

Facebook has since deleted Mr Minassian’s account, a representative said: “There is absolutely no place on our platform for people who commit such horrendous acts,” a representative said in an email.

Ari Blaff, who went to high school with Mr Minassian, told public broadcaster CBC that his behaviour “was usually quite strange.” But Mr Blaff said he’d “never noticed anything violent” — the suspect just “made people feel uneasy around him”.

Mr Minassian’s mother told a community newspaper in 2009 that he suffered from a form of autism known as Asperger’s.

Adapted from Accused Toronto attacker’s allegiance to misogynistic group ‘Incel Rebellion’ and Now there’s a dating website for misogynists.