Some non-Islam theories of Mutallab

Mike Berman writes:

If you were forced to live under these conditions in London, wouldn’t you want to end it all and bring as many with you as you could?

LA replies:

But he had completed his three years of engineering studies in Britain, his British student visa had expired, and he wasn’t able to get another British visa. So maybe that’s why he did it—out of frustration with a West he loved that excluded him, like a man killing a woman who has dumped him. Except that he had just been given a very generous two year visa for the United States. So scratch that theory.

Mike Berman continues:

If you care to see this edifice in all its glory, go to No.2 Mansfield Street W1, London, England in Google street map view. I can’t imagine a more magnificent structure.

Steps: Go to Google, click Maps, type the address, No.2 Mansfield Street W1, London, England, and press Enter. When the map appears, click on “More” (not the “more” at the top of the page, use the “more” below the address on the left), then click on “street view.” Another way to get the street view is to click and drag the man-shaped icon in the upper right-hand corner of the map to the location indicated by a teardrop A.

LA replies:

I’ve followed Mike’s instructions and I’m astonished. By tapping the left or right arrow key, you get a 360 degree view of the block. How did Google do this? Did they send out teams of photographers taking multiple photographs of every street and building in the world?

Mike Berman writes:

All of the fools who keep throwing charity at the Palestinians, because they imagine that poverty creates terrorists, should see this.

LA replies:

What we need are photos of his father’s home in Nigeria.

Mike Berman replies:

Your wish is my command:

Unidentified men walk in front of the house of Alhaji Umar Abdul Mutallab,
the father of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the alleged Christmas Day terrorist,
in Funtua, Katsina state, Nigeria, Sunday Dec. 27, 2009. The house only serves
as family residence and is only attended to when there is a wedding ceremony,
because the families are living either in Kaduna, Abuja or overseas.

LA writes:

Thanks for this. The photo and caption come from this ABC article, which I will quote in a subsequent entry.

Mike Berman writes:

But notice, the father doesn’t actually live in that structure. He only appears there for special occasions. Do you think he cares to spend the bulk of his time in his stinking excuse for a country? In all likelihood, he luxuriates in the West somewhere under circumstances not unlike those of his wayward son.

Mikc Berman writes:

You wrote:

“I’ve followed Mike’s instructions and I’m astonished. By tapping the left or right arrow key, you get a 360 degree view of the block. How did Google do this? Did they send out teams of photographers taking multiple photographs of every street and building in the world?”

Play with the site some more. Try the up and down keys to see the upper floors. Also, by moving the street arrows you can travel down the block and see around the corner. By double-clicking, you can get a close-up view of something. I discovered that I could have sent you a link to the page by using the menus at the upper right of the screen.

A. Zarkov writes:

For a better aerial view of No.2 Mansfield Street W1, London use Google Earth—the resolution is somewhat better than Google Maps. Zoom down to the rooftop of No.2 and you can see an inner courtyard with gardens. It’s a little hard to make this out, but it’s there.

Google does have mobile cameras that run around photographing everything. I put in my address and up came a perfect high resolution street level picture of the front of my house. This is amazing because I live on an ordinary suburban street in the East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area. A nice neighborhood, but nothing special. Although it’s not cheap to live here. Actually it’s not my house. I rent. I sold my house at the peak of the market and didn’t buy again because I expected real estate to crash. I have not been disappointed.

Edward writes:

In addition to the fact that the West is highly naive it should be noted that the airline terrorist comes from a family of assimilated people. Yet he became an extremist. Liberals hope that with time Third World people will assimilate into Western culture and values.

What we see is the exact opposite. Third Worlders from families that have assimilated are returning to extreme Islam and tribalism. The exact opposite of what liberals had hoped for.

I think the reason for this is that they see the West as weak and as losers and fools. While they see their own leaders as winning and therefore wise. Exactly the same situation that the German people saw as Hitler advanced forward and Chamberlain and the Democratic world retreated and appeased. History does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.

LA replies:

Good line.

Rick U. writes:

This sounds like Thomas Friedman’s assertion that Muslim’s are radicalized in the West rather than in their native country. How can this be proven? The problem is that there is no control group we can cite to verify the thesis, i.e., we cannot say they are radicalized in the West because they are the only radical Muslims in the West, and yet they are certainly not the only radical Muslims in the world. The fact that they have the wealth to move around in the West, can blend in with their surroundings, speak English, have some technical proficiency, and thus the opportunity carry out these attacks seems more plausible as an explanation than just being “alienated individuals.” Common sense suggests that they are radicals because Islam itself is radical, and they are recruited as soldiers in the global jihad because they have experience in Western culture which gives them a better chance of success than the same radical who lives as a Bedouin in some desert in the Middle East.

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Note: see my catalogue of non-Islam theories of Islamic extremism.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 27, 2009 12:10 PM | Send