The initial media coverage of Zakaria Bulhan, the London Muslim stabber who murdered an elderly American woman and slashed several others, focused on claims that he was "mentally ill". It still does. Only belatedly were we told that he was Somali. And most people don't understand the implications of that. Even now the coverage still emphasizes claims that he was "mentally ill".
Along with claims that he was shy and bullied in school. Heat Street however has found something entirely unsurprising.
Between January 2014 and September 2015, Zakaria Bulhan flagged up on Good Reads three books on Islam and Islamist theology as texts they intended to read.
The most interesting, and the one that shows that at the age of 17 this person was at the very least exploring a book which is very clear on urging violent jihadism as a duty of Muslims, is Riyad-us-Saliheen, a 13th century text.
The text is full of calls to Jihad and advocacy for it, though of course much the same thing could be said of the Koran.
1. This preemptively damages the "he was secular irreligious" narrative that the media trots out nearly as often as the mental illness one
2. It means that Bulhan, assuming this is him, was a devout Muslim with a likely interest in Jihad
The whole mental illness claim is a dodge. It's always been a dodge. Hitler was mentally ill. That didn't fundamentally change the culpability there. Some Islamic terrorists might be considered crazy by our standards, but it doesn't change the fact that they are acting as part of a murderous ideology.