The New Face of Radical Islamist Terrorism

His name is Alexandre. He went to a large Parisian shopping mall. He bought a pocket knife and a carton of orange juice. He said a Moslem prayer in a corner of the mall. He then attacked a 22-year-old French soldier on patrol, stabbing him several times in the neck and throat. Alexandre was also 22. He was homeless. He had converted to radical Islam as a teenager. He was arrested today at the home of a friend who has not been implicated. He was identified through DNA on the plastic juice bottle, said Christophe Crepin, spokesman for the French police union UNSA. Alexandre told police 'I know why you're here.' A French police spokesman said that "The nature of the attack, the fact that it happened three days after the London attack and a prayer that was carried shortly before the attack make us believe that he acted in the name of his religious ideology and that his wish was to attack someone representing the state." The spokesman also said the man came under scrutiny after a street prayer in 2007 and authorities had his DNA profile on record after a series of petty crimes as a minor. Under French anti-terrorism law, he can be held for 96 hours without charge, but French police believe he was a Lone Wolf would-be assassin. If so, this would be the first time a French Moslem convert committed a lone-wolf style terrorist act, rather than as part of a terrorist network, according to an analyst who said Lone Wolf attacks are the most alarming because it's completely unpredictable." French Interior Minister Manuel Valls said, "I have said it before and I say it again. We have dozens if not hundreds of potential terrorists in our country." ~~~~~ Dear readers, this is the new face of radical Islam terrorism in our midst. Drones and hit squads are essentially useless against them. There is nothing swashbuckling or world-changing about their violent acts. They will not be remembered for long as individuals. They are outcasts being turned against society by professional terrorists using religion and the social difficulties of young men to wreak violence on citizens of the democracies of the world and on the Moslems in their own world who dare to disagree with them. In both cases, our children are being brainwashed into ticking time bombs and we need a strategy to stop the perpetrators and to recover these young and vulnerable converts to a false religion of domestic and international terrorism.