Quote:
Originally Posted by Cherie
He was filmed being led away though shouting Allalhu Akbar, of course he may be mentally ill etc etc, but the bottom line is random knife attacks on strangers wasn't that common or common at all before ISIS, and even if he isn't a terrorist per se, it was a terrorist inspired attack
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Yes but making a distinction between an organised terrorist attack, and a random act of personal violence prompted by seeing or "copying" terrorist attacks, is actually quite important on a wider sociological level.
E.g. I believe the first widely publicised act of "vehicle terrorism" (ramming a van into a crowd) was carried out by a Muslim, but has also been done by white supremacists since then. You wouldn't call the white supremacist attacks "Muslim terrorism" because they "got the idea from Muslim terrorism" and this should apply across the board.
Was this attacker actually doing it in the name of his god? Was it an attack planned and prompted by a larger group? Or was it an unplanned violent psychotic outburst and "that's what you shout when you do this stuff"?
In terms of the media, the latter is still dubbed an "act of terrorism" and to be pedantic it obviously is one, but I personally think its
vital to make the distinction between true, planned, network-based acts of Islamic terrorism and random lone killers. ISIS will claim anything at all as "theirs" once its done, even if they had no prior knowledge of the individual at all.