Digging into their pasts after the attacks, European investigators found that the criminals were actually “lazy” non-observant Muslims. They did not associate with the Muslim community around them, and many of them did not even have jobs. In interviews, their own family members characterized them as irreligious deadbeats who spent their time smoking marijuana in bars and “never went to the mosque.” Their relatives further divulged that these extremists had never even read the Quran before. Suffice it to say, these are hardly the images of devout “holy warriors” drunk on over-immersion into their religion that the Western media likes to portray. These were criminal assholes that were very far from their faith and looking to kill people for no reason.

XREF: Contrasts with common media framing of terrorists as hyper-religious; relates to broader debates about the drivers of religious extremism. QUESTION: If perpetrators are irreligious, what actually drives the radicalization-to-violence pathway? Worth probing the causal mechanism.

XREF: Complicates the common media narrative of religiously-motivated terrorism, connecting to broader debates about the actual drivers of radicalization. QUESTION: What does drive these non-observant individuals to violence if not religious conviction? Worth investigating the criminological profile.

Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Gl…, loc. 475