Some years ago leaders of al Qaeda called on followers of radical Islam to use trucks as weapons to “mow down” infidel non-believers in the West who are “enemies of Allah.” 

That was 2010. In 2014 leaders of the Islamic State, a.k.a. ISIS, offered similar advice to its supporters, urging them to kill infidels with a rock, knife, poison or just “run over him with your car.”

Islamic terrorists around the world understand well that vehicles are common throughout the West and that it is virtually impossible to tell when someone is preparing to use one as a weapon of mass murder.

Since these calls have gone out there have been incidents throughout Europe — London, Stockholm, Nice, Berlin, and Barcelona, to name a few cities. And an Uzbek Muslim, Sayfullo Saipov, on behalf of ISIS, rented a truck and used it to kill eight people in New York City in October, Frontpage Magazine notes.

The attack earlier this month in Toronto, Canada, involved a vehicle — a rented van — whose driver killed 10 people while injuring 13 more. 

“As with other attacks, confusion prevailed about the motive,” Lloyd Billingsley of Frontpage wrote, adding of the latest vehicle-borne murders:

The driver was Alek Minassian, 25, of nearby Richmond Hill, a Seneca College student supposedly unknown to the police, as some reports claimed, but known to the police in others. On Tuesday, he emerged as a “special needs” student who would walk around making meowing noises.

He has reportedly called for a “rebellion” for the “incels,” or involuntary celibacy, against the popular people of the world. He praised Elliot Roger, who is allegedly also an incel, for his murder of a half-dozen people in Santa Barbara, Calif., in 2014. 

While Canadian officials still have not released a motive for Minassian’s actions — odd in and of itself given that Western authorities usually know more about mass murder suspects in 24 hours than their parents or best friends learned all their lives — he essentially “escaped recognition entirely” at the early stages following his attack, Billingsley wrote.

Instead, the Western Pravda media took to blaming the murders on the machine that Minassian used as his instrument of death rather than on him for renting it and then repeatedly driving over pedestrians with it.

In their first press conference, Toronto police noted that “a vehicle was driving” and hitting pedestrians, as though it were autonomous.

Similarly, “A rental van mowed down pedestrians,” reported the Globe and Mail, which noted that a white van with the Ryder logo “fled the area.”  

One witness named Ali told the paper he believes the driver had a heart attack. However, a local café worker, Chelsea Luelo, told CNN the driver was intentionally running people over.

Not ‘the van.’

Billingsley noted further: 

By many accounts, Minassian acted deliberately but Canadian authorities were discounting terrorism and invoking mental illness as the motive. If the reporting was correct, and there was room for reasonable doubt, this was not a jihadist attack in the style of Sayfullo Saipov. 

So — is it just a copycat attack? Perhaps, but something Toronto Mayor John Tory said really struck a chord with many. 

“I hope that we will, as a city, remind ourselves of the fact that we are admired around the world for being inclusive and for being accepting and understanding and considerate.”

What’s that about?

Robert Spencer, director of Jihad Watch, said there have been many incidents involving Islamic terrorists that are swept under the rug as “mental health” issues. As Billingsley noted, it appears as though the Toronto mayor is making a preemptive statement about being ‘inclusive’ of those who are mentally ill — and who also drive trucks into innocent pedestrians.

Whether or not the Toronto attack was legitimately an Islamic extremist-inspired terrorist attack or not, we may never know. But it sure fits a couple of patterns.

See more coverage of terrorism and terrorist attacks at Terrorism.news.

J.D. Heyes is a senior writer for NaturalNews.com and NewsTarget.com, as well as editor of The National Sentinel.

Sources include:

Frontpagemag.com

NewsTarget.com