Westgate mall in Nairobi, Kenya is an upscale mall popular with foreigners and expatriates and middle-class and well-to-do Kenyans. Yesterday afternoon it was packed with shoppers when heavily armed gunmen burst in and began shooting and killing non-Muslims...unbelievers...infidels...in cold blood.
People who identified themselves as Muslims or who the gunmen thought were Muslim were allowed to leave and were unharmed. Non-Muslims...unbelievers...infidels...were shot and killed. As of this writing 69 people are confirmed dead and another 175 have been wounded. The situation is still ongoing and the number of dead and wounded is expected to rise once it becomes resolved. Women, children and the elderly are among the dead and wounded.
The gunmen are identified as belonging to al-Shabab, a Somali Islamist terrorist group that has sworn allegiance to al-Qaeda and is fighting to make Islam and Sharia supreme in Somalia. Kenya was targeted because as part of the African Union it is sending soldiers to Somalia to fight the Islamists there, the mall was targeted because of its popularity with foreigners and expatriates and because it is partially Israeli owned and non-Muslims...unbelievers...infidels were targeted because the Islamist murderers wanted to sow terror and send a message to the Kenyan government and decided that slaughtering them was the best way to do it, slaughtering non-Muslims...unbelievers...infidels being permissible, legitimate and obligatory according to Islam.
The West Edmonton Mall in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada is the largest shopping mall in North America and one of the largest in the world...it was the largest in the world until 2004. There are over 800 stores and services in the mall and it attracts anywhere between 60 and 150,000 shoppers per day. People come from all over Canada, the United States and the rest of the world to shop there. It is quite possibly the best example of consumerism and the consumer society one can find in North America. An Islamist who wanted to make a statement against consumerism and the consumer society or the wicked, profligate, un-Islamic ways of the West or some such thing might easily think that going into the mall and shooting and killing non-Muslims...unbelievers...infidels was a great way to do it, slaughtering non-Muslims...unbelievers...infidels being permissible, legitimate and obligatory according to Islam. An Islamist might easily do more than think about it...he or she might go ahead and do it. That’s not far-fetched or out of the question at all.
Think that can’t happen in the West Edmonton Mall or some other mall in Canada or the United States do you?
You’re wrong.
Sure it can.
Just like it happened in Nairobi.
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and the United States being full of Islamists.
Jerry Philipson is a retired grandfather who has spent many years working in non-profit social service agencies in Canada and the United States. He holds dual Canadian and American citizenship and has been passionate about politics, civil liberties, freedom and democracy for virtually his whole life. He is particularly interested in the Middle East and America and believes that it is vital for people of good heart and good conscience to speak out against tyranny and dishonesty and to stand up and defend and protect Western values, principles and institutions.
