Blurry line between ‘wannabe’ and jihadi
Martin Rouleau had barely been declared dead Monday when the prime minister and others were labelling the lethal vehicular attack on two soldiers an act of terrorism.
By Tuesday, the drumbeat of warnings about a new era in homegrown Muslim radicalism had grown louder, with one cabinet minister describing the crime as nothing less than an assault on Canadian values.
But can a young Quebecer who only recently converted to Islam and began spouting “wannabe Jihadi” rhetoric — with no known links to other Muslims, let alone extremists — really be considered a terrorist? Or was Mr. Rouleau just another disturbed man lashing out with senseless and tragic violence?
The answer is as blurry, experts suggested Tuesday, as the two phenomena that the 25-year-old seemed to embody: lone-wolf killing and homegrown radicalism.
It would put him on a spectrum of murderous loners from the Columbine shooters to Norway’s Anders Breivik and the U.S. army psychiatrist who opened fire on a military base, said Lorne Dawson, a University of Waterloo sociologist and expert in domestic extremism.
“It does fall into this whole ambiguous area,” he said. “The single unifying factor is the degree to which they are doing this on their own.… It’s hard for them to get along even with other radicalized individuals.”
Relatively little is known about exactly what drove the killer to run over two service members with his 2000 Nissan Altima, then lead police on a high-speed chase that ended when his car crashed and officers shooting him dead.
Neighbours told reporters Mr. Rouleau had converted to Islam and grown a thick beard within the last few months. His Twitter account featured the ISIS flag and talked of “the fire of Hell” for disbelievers.
And the government confirmed that his passport had been seized as one of about 90 Canadians suspected of planning to join jihadist fighters in the Middle East.
No evidence has yet surfaced, though, that he was linked to an actual terrorist group.
Still, to convert to a new religion and to adopt such violent, radical ideology suggests that he was influenced by others, in person or online, said Wagdy Loza, head of the Canadian Psychological Association’s extremism and terrorism section.
“The process of converting and then becoming extremist or terrorist — he must have been taught something by somebody,” said Dr. Loza, former head psychologist at Kingston Penitentiary and an adjunct professor at Queen’s University. “You don’t get converted to a religion, and the next thing you’re killing people like that [on one’s own]. He must have been handled by some organization.”
Prof. Dawson said it is by no means a given, though, that Mr. Rouleau had contact with any individuals or groups, certainly not directly.
As a lone-wolf Islamist terrorist, he would bear some similarity to Nidal Hasan, the former U.S. army psychiatrist who went on a rampage at Fort Hood in 2009, killing 13 people. Hasan had exchanged some emails with Anwar Al-Awlaki, a Jihadist imam, but developed most of his radical ideas through personal research and reading on the Internet, noted Prof. Dawson.
Likewise, Richard Reid, the so-called shoe bomber, did circulate on the margins of the Islamist movement, but carried out his thwarted airline attack more or less independently.
Mr. Rouleau’s output on social media sites fits a pattern of like-minded homegrown radicals, said the co-director of the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security and Society.
“The Web material suggests classic, amateur, wannabe jihadi stuff,” said Prof. Dawson. “He’s collecting stuff from online, cutting and pasting and putting up stuff he likes.… There are a lot of people who engage in that rhetoric and bluster.”
The seizure of his passport, possibly ending dreams of joining ISIS or similar groups in the Middle East, may have been the trigger that pushed Mr. Rouleau to kill in his own backyard, he said.
It remains a “million-dollar question” what motivates someone born and bred in the West to turn to any kind of violent Muslim radicalism. There are some clues, though. Evidence suggests, for instance, that they tend to be sensitive individuals motivated by what they consider a moral cause, leading them to a “cognitive opening” — a moment when they become primed for new and strange ideas, said Prof. Dawson.
“At that moment … they encounter people or material online, or both usually, that are promoting the jihadi orientation,” he said. “They find quick, clean, clear answers.”