An alleged white van allegedly driven by Alek Minassian allegedly ploughed through a Toronto crowd, killing 10 and injuring 15.
There, I hope I’ve satisfied the criteria of responsible reporting, where everything is only alleged – except the corpses. Those are real and indisputable.
I might have exaggerated slightly. Reports of the crime described neither the white van nor the way it was used as ‘alleged’. Only the criminal rated such consideration, this although hundreds of people saw him jump out of the murder weapon.
It’s not as if the driver escaped, and the police conducted a thorough investigation eventually leading to an arrest, with the man denying it all. In that case, it would be legitimate to report that the alleged driver of the white van has been arrested. But hey, every field has its technical jargon.
Let’s drop this parasite qualifier and state unequivocally that the white van was definitely driven by Alek Minassian, 25, student of Seneca College in Toronto’s suburb of North York.
That’s all we know about him so far. The police doubtless know more, but won’t tell.
Such reticence encourages idle speculation, and this is what I propose to indulge in for a minute or two.
First, the crime distinctly lacks novelty appeal. Many identical crimes have been committed before, usually by alleged – no, scrap that – unquestionable Muslims, who both simplified forensic investigation and reconfirmed their inspiring faith by shouting “Allahu Akbar!”
This method of expressing piety has been recommended by Al Qaeda, in an article entitled “The Ultimate Mowing Machine” appearing on its website. A pick-up truck or a van, explained the article helpfully, can be used as “a mowing machine, not to mow grass but mow down the enemies of Allah.” Non-Muslims, in other words.
The article was both building on experience already amassed and looking into the future. For murder by vehicle has a long, if inglorious, history, with such incidents occurring recently in North Carolina (2006), Jerusalem (2014), Nice (2016), Ohio (2016), Berlin (2016), London (2017), Stockholm (2017), London again (2017), Barcelona (2017), Edmonton (2017), New York (2017).
All these incidents involved Muslims as active agents, against only one in which they found themselves on the receiving end. A chap called Darren Osborne drove his van through the crowd outside London’s Finsbury Park Mosque, by way of a retaliatory strike.
Obviously, whatever religion he espoused provided insufficient motivation, for he only managed to kill one worshipper. Followers of what our politicians describe as a ‘religion of peace’ invariably score in double digits.
So what about Minassian? Is he a Muslim? If Canadian police follow the same government guidelines as other Western police forces, they won’t say, not immediately at any rate.
Governments insist on such reticence not because this kind of information is irrelevant, but because it may incite anti-Muslim sentiments not yet incited by previous atrocities.
That’s the official explanation. The unofficial, true one is that we can’t sin against multi-culti probity. Yes, most such atrocities have been credited to Muslims. Yet this purely coincidental fact has nothing to do with Islam.
Nor should the past encourage any conjecture on the present and future. The statistical dial is reset after each atrocity. The next one could be committed by a Methodist just as easily as by a Muslim.
Our governments seem to have been informed by Bertrand Russell who argued, among his other fallacies, that one can’t assume the sun will rise tomorrow just because it rose yesterday.
Applying this misconception to ‘the mowing machines’ leaves simple mortals like me merely speculating on the religious identity of each new driver, in this case Minassian.
Although he unhelpfully neglected to shout “Allahu Akbar!”, on the balance of statistical probability Minassian has to be a Muslim. If the sun has been rising every day for millions of years, it’ll rise tomorrow, whatever Russell said.
On the other hand, Minassian is an Armenian name. And Armenians aren’t just non-Muslims but actively anti-Muslim.
Such unfashionable feelings mostly date back to the 1915 massacre of 1.5 million Armenians by the Turks, although there have been many others, both in the Ottoman Empire and in Azerbaijan (the latest one in 1990).
If Minassian isn’t Muslim, why did he choose the murder method to which Muslims can justifiably claim proprietary rights? That’s letting the side down, or rather both sides.
You see what kind of thorny paths one is forced to tread if denied proper information? Alas, these days reporters aren’t allowed to report, nor, in many cases, investigators to investigate. The rule of PC law won’t be compromised.
“So what about Minassian? Is he a Muslim? ”
That last name sounds Armenian. Alek did a short stint in the Canadian military so it is said.
It seems the van driver had problems with females. They rejected his “advances” and proposals of romance? Maybe a bath once in a while would have helped.