I haven’t seen much evidence that non-Muslims are blowing the whistle on radicals either. “See something, shut the hell up” seems to be the general operating principle here.
I’d be afraid of being wrong and the government over reacting/wrongly prosecuting someone I cared about. I wouldn’t have any faith in a fair investigation. So if I thpught there was a 50/50 chance my cousin was plotting something and a 50/50 chance I ruin my innocent cousin’s life and cost him his freedom? No way I say anything.
People do this all the time when they kinda sorta suspect a family member of sexual abuse.
There’s also the fact that hindsight is 20/20. We see it all the time when other types of criminals do things. People come out of the woodwork saying “I always knew there was something wrong with that boy.”
Other Muslims may have suspicions, but it’s only after something happens that they are sure enough to say anything. No one wants to rat on the guy who isn’t actually bad just because they act weird.
I think your assumption is incorrect. I don’t think the perpetrators are talking to the people they know about their plans. They may complain about the actions of the Government and the “West”, but I imagine that is a pretty universal feeling right now. It isn’t like western society is making the non-violent loyal residents feel all welcome and valued right now. I am sure everyone is complaining amongst themselves. It is probably hard to detect the real signal among all the noise. If someone does suspect something, it is very much in their self-interest to speak up. They will surely suffer if someone from their community commits a serious crime.
Heck, Dylan Roof (the south carolina church shooter) was picked up so quickly because the instant one of his friends heard about the shooting he knew Roof was the perpetrator and called the police. But he hadn’t said anything earlier because he didn’t believe anything bad would actually happen. So the question of when to call the police isn’t limited to one group.
It’s really simply because like-minded clans tend to stick together. Whether it’s ethnicity or religion or age or location etc. most all cultures have an innate abhorrence to being a ‘rat’, often to the point of being at fault. In terms of religion, it’s the same reason that Catholic priests who diddled little kids weren’t ever turned in by other church members (or often not even by their parishioners)…
Well if they are anything like white supremacist groups I’d guess it’s because they choose their friends carefully.
A friend told me that when he moved to one small town in Kansas he was approached by 2 guys who started asking him questions about his ideas on race and all. He later learned they were part of a local clan group.
This. I used to live and work in Luton (UK), which has long been known as a hotbed of Muslim terrorism, but really, it’s just a very few people, and it’s wrong to slur the rest.
There was an incident this same year where a Spanish man killed his ex and another woman in Spain (one Romanian, one Spanish), fled to a friend’s house in Romania, and was eventually turned over by the Romanian friend and his Spanish wife. The murderer had gotten there saying “I killed them”, but the first reaction of the friends was “this idiot is blowing more smoke than a forest fire”; even after reporting at the police station the Romanian was having trouble believing it. The wife had realized it was true when she checked the news on a Spanish website as she sometimes did.
It’s hard to get past the belief that the people you know are, well, normal.
Yeah, when Bill Clinton was first elected on his pro-small-business platform. a small business owner I knew was so radicalized by his fear that the pro-small-business agenda would somehow hurt his small business that he suggested someone should kill the president-elect.
I repeatedly asked him if he was serious, and his rhetoric ramped up and up until I asked if I should call the Secret Service. He finally relented when he saw I was serious.
So should I have really called the Secret Service down on this clown? What’s wrong with my kind of people, that we don’t “out” these clowns?
You (and adaher) are assuming they tell their non-like minded friends, and I’m just not seeing evidence of that.
As **sailboat’s ** story illustrates, people who go around talking up what they are going to do are blowhards. People who actually intend to commit violence will keep it very quiet lest they be stopped.
Snitches get stitches.
I think you’re right- it’s likely some combination of the ideas:
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They don’t know for sure, and don’t want to potentially wreck someone’s life and subject their own community to a lot of invasive scrutiny over someone seeming a bit off.
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It’s often hard to tell the truth from someone bullshitting about that kind of thing.
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It’s not like these guys are going around openly talking about their radicalized jihadist activities for the most part.